Since September 2021, as part of Patient Know Best’s Education Programme, PKB have been partnered with the University of Manchester Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.   The largest medical school in the UK, with over 2,200 undergraduate medical students.

At the beginning of the collaboration an article announcing the project, entitled “Manchester University and PKB team up to teach students about digital health”, outlined the University's intention to provide the students with simulated patients to plan the management of their care through PKB’s digital record platform. 

As the mission of our Education Programme is to support educators in training students on the tools of digital health, we are proud to have been used over the last 18 months by a total of 1,300 students - 500 of their year 5 medical students and 150 pharmacy students each year. These students, once graduated, will be already familiar with Personal Health Records, which will allow them to become digital transformation leaders equipped with an understanding of the healthcare practices of the future.

Up until now, PKB have worked mainly alongside  the medical school, with students utilising the platform interprofessionally both from medicine and pharmacy courses. In addition to this, PKB will soon be used by the nursing students at the same university. 

These and other students using PKB across the country will become key drivers and instigators of the NHS digital transformation programmes that are currently being implemented.

This case study provides more information about the work that has been done, and benefits achieved in the first 18 months since the beginning of the collaboration. 

Before the covid-19 pandemic, Year 5 medical students used to have in-person interprofessional sessions with final year pharmacy students. The students were divided into groups, and each group was given paper folders including patient’s notes, showing bloods and details of the patient’s admission. Students were then asked to create a care plan for each patient and prioritise their work. 

When covid-19 hit and teaching was moved online, the team at the university didn’t have a way to replicate the interactivity of this session, so they found no other option than to cancel it for one academic year. 

Once the University found out about PKB’s Education Programme, they immediately saw how the tool could have been embedded in their teaching, both to reproduce those “problem based learning” interactive sessions in an online environment, as well as to pursue new learning outcomes. 

As part of the effort to bring their interactive interprofessional session back to life, the team at the university worked with PKB to replicate all the notes they had, in a digital format within the PKB platform. 

The two case study records created showed data such as admission letters, blood test results, chest X-rays, ECG scans, a detailed medication list and history of present conditions.

Medication section of one of the case study patients’ record - Tablet and mobile phone view

As with the in-person sessions, the students (500 medical students plus 150 pharmacy students) were divided into small groups of 6.  

Having access as professionals to the University Training Environment within PKB, the students were able to look at the test patients’ records both during a Zoom session with their tutors, and in their own time.