What Happened at Academy Live 2021 & What’s Next for Capacity Building

By: Kasey Upchurch
Posted On: October 22, 2021

On September 30, 2021, OpenHIE hosted the first-ever instance of live learning around standards-based approaches to health information and to create a foundation for those new to this community. This event was called Academy Live.

Academy Live hosted over 40 participants. Learners were led through material to cover concepts of interoperability, function and application of the OpenHIE Architecture framework and its components, and the role of terminology and health data exchange standards.

Facilitators presented key concepts to all attendees and then breakout sessions would follow, giving participants the opportunity to have discussions in small groups to work through scenarios based on health information exchange needs. Once breakout sessions concluded, groups had the opportunity to share their findings with the larger group.

Great content, well-paced, and not overwhelmingly long. Very educational. Learned a few new things for sure. – Academy Live Attendee

What’s Next for Capacity Building and Learning Opportunities

This event in particular was developed as a stepping stone for the next phase of OpenHIE Academy as well as to help give attendees a foundation for attending the OpenHIE Virtual Community Meeting, if they were new to this community and HIE concepts (held the week following this Academy Live event).

Since early 2021, OpenHIE Academy launched with many self-paced, virtual courses on introductory HIE concepts, deeper materials on subjects within HIE architecture (interoperability, health data standards, etc.), and links to content hosted by peers to OpenHIE.

The next step for the Academy is to implement the learning ladder, which was first introduced at Academy Live. At the base of this ladder is an understanding of the foundations of health information exchange which is completed by earning a certificate in “OpenHIE Academy Foundations”. After earning this certificate, learners can then advance to get started with an information exchange project with additional learning and documentation from: the Getting Started Guide, the Architecture Specification, and the Academy Workshop (a work-in-progress). Finally, the next step would be advancing to specialized Academy courses to enhance learning as needed.

Academy Certification

The Academy website hosts FREE virtual, self-paced courses. The free courses often end with a short assessment which will then produce a certificate of course completion that you can download and share. In order to align with this new learning ladder, the OpenHIE Academy community now offers a new type of certification in the “Foundations of Health Information Exchange.”

To obtain this certificate, community members will need to demonstrate an understanding of HIE concepts, the OpenHIE architecture components, and other related topics as noted on this page.

After ensuring they are prepared for this certification, community members will then need to take the certification exam and pass with an 80% score or higher. In order to access the exam, users will need to pay $39 for the cost of the certification. These funds will be used to grow and sustain the OpenHIE Academy and Academy Certifications.

If you are interested in preparing to take the certification exam in order to receive the “Foundations in Health Information Exchange Certification,” you can start by reading everything you need to know to prepare for this exam and how to take it on this web page.

For those interested in Academy certification, future certifications, and future Academy opportunities, we recommend signing up for the OpenHIE community mailing list for notification.