UpHill Simulate is a software for clinical training and simulation for physicians, developed by UpHill. It allows physicians to simulate their practice for a given clinical case and receive detailed feedback regarding their actions, according to evidence-based medicine.
The clinical cases are created according to specific learning objectives and public audiences and are owned by healthcare institutions licensed to use the software. Access to clinical cases is granted by the institution.
In this article:
The landing page
Once we have logged in to Uphill and have access to one institution page, we see a list of clinical cases available.
Starting a simulation
Once we are ready to start a simulation, preliminary information is given about the clinical case and its structure.
In the example below, the clinical case is composed of two Moments.
A Moment is defined as a moment of interaction the healthcare professional has with the patient. It can be:
Appointments of a specialty
Urgency
Follow-up appointments
Etc
In the below example:
The clinical case has 2 moments that are sequential appointments spaced over 14 days and has also pre-loaded clinical history and records:
The two appointments mean there are different expected actions to be done by the user, related to the information we can obtain from the pre-loaded data inside the simulator. Once we are ready, we click on the button Next.
Inside the Simulator
Depending on the learning objectives, each simulation starts with:
A basic appointment record from a physician that references the patient.
Prescribed drugs;
Vital Signs
We need to carefully read these insights to know which action we must make during the simulation.
After reading the record, we start the simulation by clicking on the button Start Simulation.
The UpHill Simulate platform recreates the design of an EHR (Electronic Health Record) program of a Hospital.
At the header, we can see the patient’s vital signs and basic information of the patient;
The chronology of all registered actions during the simulation including pre-loaded data can be found in the left-side column.
All possible actions during the simulation are grouped into four categories:
Records tab
The healthcare professional can create different types of records such as:
Hospitalization record;
Appointment record;
Admission records;
Etc.
After writing the record, do not forget to save it by clicking on the Save button.
In this tab, we also perform the anamnesis and objectives exams on the patient, by clicking on the available options:
Exams tab
In this tab, the healthcare professional can search and request all types of exams and in some clinical cases, a shortlist is available.
After selecting the exam, do not forget to register the request by clicking on the Request button.
Commonly, the results of the requested exam appear at the next moment of the simulation, to recreate a time gap.
When they become available, we can view them through the chronology column or inside the Exams tab.
Note: Only expected exams to be required in a moment are configured to give a result for the user. The exams will vary per clinical case and learning objectives.
Diagnosis tab
In this tab, we can search through the ICD-10 catalog to register the Diagnosis of the clinical case.
After writing the record, do not forget to save it by clicking on the Save button.
After adding and selecting the diagnosis, don't forget to save it by pressing the button Add.
Plan tab
In the Plan tab, we can view current active prescriptions. The available actions are subdivided into 4 groups:
Interventions and Recommendations
Actions such as Smoke cessation or Diet could be found here
Appointment
We can schedule many appointment types such as referring to a specialty colleague or a follow-up.
Drugs
We can search by the name of the active principle we wish to administrate to the patient, the doses, and the posology.
Surveillance and Monitoring
We can request to monitor other vital signs of the patient if needed.
After adding and selecting the wanted actions, don't forget to save it by pressing the button Prescribe.
Advancing in the simulation
After registering all the actions that the healthcare professional would do for the given simulated patient, the user can advance to the next moment of the clinical case by clicking on the Next button, on the top-right of the platform:
Note: after advancing to the next moment, we cannot go back to the previous one.
Ending the simulation and Feedback page
When we found ourselves in the last configured moment of the clinical case, the Next button turn into the Finish button.
After registering all the wanted actions at the last moment, we can end our simulation by pressing the blue button on the top right of the screen. The platform informs us that the simulation has ended and automatically guides us to a feedback panel of our score and actions:
On the feedback page, we see a dashboard of our overall score and how we performed by categories such as exams, records, appointments, and others.
For a two-moment clinical case such as the example below, we can also filter the score per each moment:
In the "My performance" column, our performance can be divided into three categories:
Effectiveness: related to all actions listed in the clinical pathway of reference. Give us how much of these actions we have done.
Registry quality: related to all registrations we did and their quality. This often related to some specific keywords that we needed to register during the simulation.
Efficiency: related to the ratio between the necessary and unnecessary actions. An important metric for a value-based healthcare system.
Down below, we can see every expected action for the simulation and which we have done, as they appear in green.
Most of the actions have evidence attached.
The feedback page is where the discussion and post-debriefing simulation occurs.
How the score is calculated
Every clinical case is recreated according to specific learning objectives and target audience. Although the expected actions are supported by evidence and guidelines, the point attribution is arbitrary and decided by the case creator and owner. Therefore, some actions may be more important than others.
Disagreeing with the score
Simulate software gives us the chance to disagree with one action by clicking the thumbs-down button and choosing one of the available reasons for doing so and the case owner will be notified.
Closing the course
After we read all the information regarding our performance, we can close the course by clicking on the top-right button.
The software will ask us for quick feedback
After giving feedback, we return to the clinical cases page and we can see the software has been marked as concluded, although we can redo it anytime again.
Feel free to contact our Support Service for more information :D
Thank you!