In January of 2021, the OpenHIE Academy website was launched with two courses. The Academy grew out of the need to support in-person training at the 2019 OpenHIE Community meeting in Addis, Ethiopia. As the team began planning for the 2020 event, the pandemic began and the community seized the opportunity to connect with a broader audience in a way that wasn’t limited by time and space.
In the two years since its launch, the Academy online courses (currently 16 available) are designed as self-paced materials that provide an introduction in health information exchange topics, including the OpenHIE community.
The Academy has reached over 750 unique users. The most popular courses offered by the Academy are:
- 101 – Introduction to HIE: Foundations
- 110 – Overview of OpenHIE Architecture
- 260 – Interoperability
- 220 – Intro to Health Data Standards
59 users have also taken and passed the exam to earn a certification in the Foundations of Health Information Exchange. This certification is designed to show awareness in the fundamentals of HIE standards and e-health architecture.
After the certification was made available, the OpenHIE Partner Organization AeHIN initiated an exciting program to cover the cost of this certification exam to its members. You can learn more about this program and the 30 participants on this web page.
As we look to the future, the following are some of the academy goals:
- Cultivate partnerships with universities to help enrich and grow content
- Offer hands-on experiences by identifying exchange projects and creating fellowship-style opportunities
- Continue to provide more information on how to get started with components, standards, and exchange projects
To reach those goals, we will all need to work together. We look forward to hearing more from you regarding how the broader community can participate in continuing to support the educational and development needs of the community.
You can participate in the Academy by checking out the available courses and creating an account on this web page: https://academy.ohie.org/. If you have materials or interest in contributing to academy content or have ideas for other capacity building efforts, reach out to Jennifer Shivers to get connected.