Connecting knowledge resources to the veterinary electronic health record: opportunities for learning at point of care

Electronic health records (EHRs) provide clinical learning opportunities through quick and contextual linkage of patient signalment, symptom, and diagnosis data with knowledge resources covering tests, drugs, conditions, procedures, and client instructions. This paper introduces the EHR standards for linkage and the partners-practitioners, content publishers, and software developers-necessary to leverage this possibility in veterinary medicine. The efforts of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) Electronic Health Records Task Force to partner with veterinary practice management systems to improve the use of controlled vocabulary is a first step in the development of standards for sharing knowledge at the point of care. The Veterinary Medical Libraries Section (VMLS) of the Medical Library Association's Task Force on Connecting the Veterinary Health Record to Information Resources compiled a list of resources of potential use at point of care. Resource details were drawn from product Web sites and organized by a metric used to evaluate medical point-of-care resources. Additional information was gathered from questions sent by e-mail and follow-up interviews with two practitioners, a hospital network, two software developers, and three publishers. Veterinarians with electronic records use a variety of information resources that are not linked to their software. Systems lack the infrastructure to use the Infobutton standard that has been gaining popularity in human EHRs. While some veterinary knowledge resources are digital, publisher sites and responses do not indicate a Web-based linkage of veterinary resources with EHRs. In order to facilitate lifelong learning and evidence-based practice, veterinarians and educators of future practitioners must demonstrate to veterinary practice software developers and publishers a clinically-based need to connect knowledge resources to veterinary EHRs.