Public health authorities in the US have received around 8.2 million reports for COVID-19 as of May 25. And as schools prepare to open, school health authorities need to anticipate such a crisis as well and prepare with the best tools(EHR Software) to manage the crisis. A COVID 19 tracker tool with advanced contact tracing features is the technology schools need to have in place to efficiently manage this crisis. Schools in the US are expected to reopen in the fall and while parents remain concerned about children’s safety when in-person learning resumes, by using healthcare student management software are looking at ways to keep school environments safe to ensure there are no disruptions to in-person learning.
By putting in place an EHR software that facilitates the exchange of important health information between parents, school health authorities and medical professionals in real-time on one single system. This is very helpful when there are lots of student health monitoring, reporting, and cross-platform communication to tackle.
However, recent surveys say that school nurses are finding it hard to manage student data in EHR software. The reason? Bad user experience! Not every EHR software can give a pleasant user experience. Which is where a simple-to-use system that meets a school’s end-to-end school health needs like EduHealth can help. The system is so easy to use even if users are not particularly good with technology systems. The EduHealth team recently conducted a school nurse survey and 86% responded that user-friendliness is very important for school EHR systems.
And now, in the present context, what schools and school nurses are expecting in EHR software are added features like contact tracing and COVID-19 tracking. EduHealth, in this aspect, is all set to make things stress-free for school nurses.
According to a December 2020 survey of US adults, 31% of respondents believed that a contact tracing software on their mobile phones to trace the spread of COVID-19 would be very effective at slowing its spread. Only 7% believed that contact tracing software are ineffective in tracing COVID-19 spread. This indicates that EHR software with contact tracing and COVID-19 tracking may finally get their moment!
Top EHR software of 2021
We evaluated some of the top EHR systems available today and have a list for you to look into as you invest on a new EHR software for your school.
EduHealth:
EduHealth supports K-12 school health clinics in improving student health care. It digitizes students’ health information, making the right information available in a single button click and with features like bulk scanning, health information management within the system is simple and hassle-free, easing the efforts of school nurses. EduHealth can ensure utmost healthcare for children and helps school nurses proactively manage their tasks on any device.
· Comprehensive student health record management
· COVID 19 tracking and contact tracing capabilities
· Real-time communication with important touchpoints on one system
· Charts are similar to medical charts, allowing nurses to adapt to the system faster
· System can be custom-built to school’s unique needs
Infinite Campus:
Infinite Campus is a Student Information System (SIS) that has on-boarding support, parent and student portal, academic planner, and access to the inbuilt Learning Management System (LMS) platform. While Infinite Campus has great flexibility, and, is regarded as a great tool for student data tracking and parent communication, it has certain areas to look into like:
· Lack of a user-friendly interface
· Additional payment for added features
· Character limitation in fields
· EHR module is not comprehensive
PowerSchool:
PowerSchool SIS is a powerful tool that helps students, teachers, and parents maintain their schedules. It offers cloud-based software solutions for K-12 education in North America. It can manage instruction, learning, grading, assessment, and analytics among others. While PowerSchool has all such benefits, there are aspects of health record management to improve:
· Long page loading durations
· User has trouble understanding icons
· Technically challenging
· Lengthy training sessions
· Less intuitive in terms of finding shortcuts and system tools
· Customization is challenging
· EHR module is not comprehensive
SNAP Health Center:
SNAP Health Center is a management tool designed for schools of all sizes for health monitoring, screenings, appointment scheduling, and more. SNAP is a cloud-based student health surveillance tool. Certain schools don’t find SNAP Health Center as a feasible option because of its disadvantages such as:
· No free trial/version
· No training/help tools, only call/email support
· Less intuitive in terms of the complex names in menus
· User interface is difficult to maneuver
Skyward
Skyward is a K-12 SIS that offers academic planning, a portal for family engagement tools, and task management for admin and students. It is an ideal solution for schools and districts looking forward to an intelligent SIS for student data collection, organization, and ease of communication. Here are some suggestions it needs to look at:
· Software is not user-friendly and looks outdated
· Customization difficulties
· Not comprehensible
· Reporting is confusing
Synergy
With over 10,000 users, Synergy is a well-known web-based software that improves the health outcomes of school students and saves school nurses’ time and effort. It is quite the software required for educational looking forward to a SIS solution, but Synergy too has certain shortcomings such as:
· Design imperfections
· Saving downtime not up to the expectations
· Software hanging issues
EduHealth has unique features and functionalities that distinguishes it from other EHR software. From time to time, our team takes the best efforts to upgrade the software.
We are keen on how well the software is performing for school nurses and have been enthusiastic in taking in their valid suggestions for making things work better. This is one reason why EduHealth users have a better EHR experience as compared to other software.
When it comes to the COVID-19 tracker, EduHealth has taken cautious efforts to make its functions simple while keeping the system efficient in doing its job.
Schools can turn to technology solutions like electronic health records to overcome these challenges to a great extent.
Electronic health records (EHR) in schools can help to monitor staff health and absenteeism. They can manage healthcare-related data and help to improve how care is given. EHRs also play a vital role in keeping children healthy and in schools. And it’s a given that when children in schools are healthy, teachers too remain healthy.
Another benefit is electronic health records can help school nurses analyze absence patterns that could hint towards possibilities of stress or other challenges that teachers face in school. Once the underlying reasons for absences are identified, school administrations can take the necessary steps to see what can be done to ensure teachers are in safer and happier environments in the school.
Times like now, where teachers have to deal with the trauma of COVID 19, pose more challenges than usual. In these situations, teachers have to help themselves and their students, while adjusting to the new learning models. Here, an electronic health record software system with a COVID 19 tracker like EduHealth, can improve their confidence by ensuring safer schools and adherence to safety best practices. Once teachers are confident to come back to schools, the learning process can get back to normal, helping children improve their academic achievement levels
Author Bio
Arushi is a technical writer at Eduhealth. It’s a company in the US.She enjoys telling about tech innovations and digital ways to bring health and safety measures.