By: Jordan Frantz

On October 28, four Bellbrook High School Students: Miranda Lobberecht, Caitlyn Hansen, Ester Ajing, and Jacob Blankenship, presented to three Kettering Health workers the positive changes they believe would help improve the EPIC system.  EPIC is the computer software used across the Kettering Health Network for medical scheduling and charting.  

The Kettering Health workers visited Mrs.Goodwin’s Biomedical Innoventions class to answer and advise students’ questions and presentation regarding EPIC.

The meeting began with Mrs.Goodwin and the four students asking questions to the three Kettering Health workers. The student’s asked questions about the system, and how complicated it can be. 

“I learned that there are many sectors and communities to healthcare that require extensive communication to stay efficient,” senior Caityln Hansen said. “I also learned that if frontline workers, such as doctors and nurses, have a complaint or idea, it has to pass through multiple “silos” or department heads, before the idea or innovation can be acted upon.”

“I learned that it takes a while for new rules and ideas to be implemented in the medical field,” senior Miranda Lobberecht said. “There needs to be lots of communication and you have to look at every perspective. They helped us realize these perspectives when they gave us new ideas to think about after we gave our presentation.”

After the questioning process, the four students began to present their new implications to the Kettering Health Workers. The students suggested a program that takes the symptoms already recorded in the patient’s electronic chart and provides a list of diagnoses, ranked from most likely to least likely for the patient. Correlated with each diagnosis are various medications that are recommended for the specific treatment. 

The student’s acknowledged the expertise of the trained medical staff and were open for criticism. The workers were very impressed with the student’s presentation and agreed that it was a very possible solution to the issues EPIC has been experiencing. 

“I was so proud of their presentation,” Mrs.Goodwin said. “ Our guest speakers were impressed as well.  In a follow up email Renee Grim, Epic Training Lead replied “we were very impressed with their perspective and the ideas for improvement that were put together for a very real and compromising issue in Healthcare.”