EdEHR Turns Six — The Story Behind the Platform

This month, EdEHR turns six. It's a good moment to tell the story of how it came to be — and where it's going.

EdEHR didn't begin as a product. It began as a problem worth solving — and with a community determined to solve it.

The Foundation: 2014–2018

Between 2014 and 2018, a special interest group of faculty and staff from BCIT, Douglas College, UBC, UVic, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the Provincial Health Services Authority identified a gap in Canadian healthcare education: students were entering clinical placements without meaningful experience using electronic health records. They were learning to chart on the job, in live systems, with real patients.

The group spent four years researching the problem thoroughly. They reviewed five open-source platforms and six vendor-operated educational EHR systems against a detailed requirements rubric. Their conclusion, documented in an environmental scan authored by Glynda Rees (BCIT) and published June 4, 2018, was unambiguous: no existing system met Canadian educational needs. The available platforms were largely US-centric, proprietary, physician-focused, and unable to support the pedagogical flexibility Canadian programs required. The recommendation to the EdEHR Project Steering Committee was to build something new — an open-source, Canadian-built, pedagogy-first educational EHR designed from the ground up for interprofessional health sciences education.

The learning outcomes they defined were grounded in the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN) Entry-to-Practice Nursing Informatics Competencies — establishing from the project's founding documents the connection between EdEHR and Canadian nursing accreditation frameworks that remains central to the platform today.

The 2018/19 EdEHR Project Steering Committee brought together faculty and advisors from BCIT (Glynda Rees, Rob Kruger, Janet Morrison, Cheryl Isaak), Douglas College (Nina Blanes, Patricia Visosky), UBC (Joseph Anthony, Leanne Currie, Jason Min, Christie Newton), UVic (Andre Kushniruk, Elizabeth Borycki), BCcampus (Michelle Glubke, Clint Lalonde), and the BC Government (Elietha Bocskei, Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training; Katelyn Ranger, Ministry of Health). Early prototype work was contributed by Kamal Ahuja. This community built the vision. EdEHR Technologies built the platform.

Building the Platform: 2018–2020

In 2018, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training funded the project. BCcampus administered it. EdEHR Technologies — Bryan Gilbert's company — assumed the development contract and built the platform from the ground up.

Bryan's background is in technology, not healthcare. What he brought was the ability to translate a complex, community-driven pedagogical vision into working software — and a commitment to keeping that vision intact. From the beginning, the platform was built in ongoing collaboration with healthcare educators. That collaboration remains the foundation of how EdEHR is developed today. Bryan often describes his role as that of a curator: someone whose job is to understand what educators need, build technology that serves those needs, and protect the pedagogical intent that the original community established.

In March 2020, EdEHR was introduced to over 200 pharmacy students at UBC. Students completed their assignments without prior platform experience and without incident. Post-activity surveys showed strong positive response — students found the tool genuinely useful and wanted to keep using it. The prototype worked.

May 2020

The Ministry funding concluded and BCcampus stepped back from the project. The open-source codebase — licensed under AGPL — remained public. EdEHR Technologies continued development, sustained by the relationships with educators that had made the platform real in the first place.

The UVic and College Partners Partnership

One of the most significant early adoptions of EdEHR came through the University of Victoria School of Nursing and College Partners — a unique BSN partnership sharing a curriculum across UVic (Victoria), Selkirk College (Castlegar), Aurora College (Yellowknife), College of the Rockies (Cranbrook), and Camosun College (Victoria), collectively graduating approximately 230 registered nurses per year.

Academic Coordinator Joan Humphries RN PhD had received a direct accreditation directive from CASN to institute an electronic health record as part of student practice in lab settings. After significant consultation, UVic hired Bryan Gilbert to establish EdEHR across the partnership. Students from all sites began using EdEHR in their lab settings. Faculty across the partnership built learning activities using EdEHR, reflecting pedagogical best practices appropriate to professional health sciences education.

The UVic partnership illustrated something important about EdEHR's value in the Canadian context. US-sourced for-profit alternatives are not aligned with the Canadian context of healthcare, and place an economic burden on students through expensive access fees. EdEHR offered a Canadian, pedagogy-first alternative that didn't disadvantage students financially — a consideration that matters acutely in the current climate of nursing shortages and the urgent need to graduate competent registered nurses.

The BCIT Partnership

BCIT provided both funding and academic direction that shaped the foundational architecture of the clinical side of EdEHR. This partnership deserves to be named clearly: BCIT didn't just use EdEHR — they helped build what it became.

BCIT originated the concept of using EdEHR as a learning platform for Lab Information Sciences. Together, the haematology module was built — expanding EdEHR beyond clinical nursing into medical laboratory sciences for the first time. The full closed-loop Medication Administration Record was developed during this period as well, and work is currently underway to interface EdEHR with a commercial medication dispenser to complete that simulation.

Building Sustainability: 2023–Present

Around 2023, EdEHR Technologies moved development into a private repository — following the open-core model used by projects like Moodle and Red Hat. The goal was not to abandon the open-source roots but to build the organizational sustainability that could support them long-term. The open-source AGPL codebase remains publicly available, and supporting it remains a stated commitment.

Today EdEHR Technologies funds ongoing development through an institutional subscription model designed to be low-cost and high-value — accessible to publicly funded Canadian post-secondary institutions operating under real budget constraints. Faculty access remains free.

The platform has grown substantially from its prototype origins. From roughly 40 screens at pilot, EdEHR now encompasses over 100 distinct clinical screens across the full acute-care continuum — maternity, newborn, pediatrics, allied health, respiratory therapy, medical laboratory sciences, and more. It serves nursing, MLT, MLA, pharmacy, allied health, and rehabilitation programs across Canada.

The SERT Project: 2024–2026

In September 2024, BCIT led a provincially funded initiative — the SERT (Shared Educational Resources and Technology) project — supported by BCcampus and the BC Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, with Emily Tang serving as project lead. Partners included Selkirk College and Camosun College.

The SERT project addressed what a growing platform needs to be adopted at institutional scale: governance structure, privacy framework, IP and licensing clarity, community engagement, and accessibility. On the accessibility front, EdEHR Technologies engaged a development team based in Dnipro, Ukraine to address WCAG 2.2 requirements throughout the platform. We are proud to support that team and their work. EdEHR is now preparing for a formal retest at WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

EdEHR Compass — a publicly accessible, role-based implementation and sustainability guide — was also produced, hosted on GitBook and covering the full institutional adoption lifecycle from LMS setup to curriculum integration to governance. Source content lives on GitHub under EdEHR Technologies, licensed AGPL-3.0, with a governance model that gives BCIT approval authority over canonical content and an open contribution policy for the broader EdEHR community.

EdEHR in Practice: Laurentian University

The real measure of any platform is what educators do with it. In the fall of 2025, laboratory technicians Line Plante, Stephanie Kramp, and Sarah Bonin from the francophone nursing program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario demonstrated exactly what EdEHR looks like in capable hands. While simultaneously relocating their simulation labs and continuing to teach, they converted their paper patient charting and lesson plans into EdEHR learning objects and case studies, refined French-language translations across the platform, and by late September had over 250 students actively practicing medication administration. In under two months they had created more than 50 case studies and lesson plans. Their endorsement letter puts it simply: EdEHR was the ideal choice.

What EdEHR Is — and Isn't

Bryan Gilbert is not a healthcare professional. He has never claimed to be. What he is, after seven years of building this platform in close collaboration with nurses, lab scientists, allied health faculty, and program leads across Canada, is an expert in supporting educators with technology that puts pedagogy first.

That distinction matters. EdEHR is not built by a healthcare company that added an education module. It is not a US platform retrofitted for Canadian programs. It was conceived by Canadian educators, funded by the BC government, and built — and continues to be built — through ongoing collaboration between a technologist who listens carefully and a community of educators who know what their students need.

The platform's north star has never changed from what the original steering committee established in 2018: prepare students whose practice will improve patient outcomes. Every screen, every module, every feature exists in service of that goal.

With Gratitude

The EdEHR project has been shaped by dozens of educators, faculty, lab technicians, and program leads from across Canada who have contributed feedback, built case studies, tested features, corrected translations, and trusted the platform with their students. There is no complete list. Every one of those contributions matters, and Bryan carries that gratitude even when this post cannot.

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Sources: Environmental Scan Report, BCcampus EdEHR Project, June 4, 2018 (Glynda Rees, author; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International); BCcampus EdEHR Project documentation; EdEHR Technologies Inc.