Wolters Kluwer Health's Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), an academic publisher for medical students, has acquired Knoxville, Tenn.-based iCare Academic, the maker of iCare EMR, an educational program that simulates electronic medical records to prepare future nurses for 21st century healthcare.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, allows Wolters Kluwer Health to broaden its portfolio of EMR documentation and simulation support tools for nursing students, instructors and professionals.

The iCare EMR learning tool trains nursing students to manage the complex challenges of documenting care, patient safety, compliance and hospital efficiency. Designed to mirror the functionality of commercially available EMRs, it allows students to learn about EMR systems within the framework of their current educational curriculum both in the classroom and simulation environments.

"Currently, there are more than 3,000 nursing schools in the United States, and only 1 percent of them provide students with access to EMRs," said Frank Mortimer, publisher for nursing education at Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional & Education. "This acquisition is an example of our continued commitment to provide nurses and educators with better evidence-based nursing practice information and resources, improving the quality of both instruction and patient care."

Nursing students can record and retrieve data such as physical assessments, vital signs and medication administration. Within the simulation education environment, students can electronically document their "care" and then have that record available to them in all phases of the nursing curriculum. Nursing faculty can also build their own patient-care scenarios and evaluate students on documentation of physical assessments as well as general EMR documentation skills.

"iCare was built from the clinician's and educator's perspectives to provide an exceptionally intuitive and user-friendly, educationally-based EMR," said Tami Wyatt, RN, co-founder of iCare. "iCare provides nursing students exposure in the use of health information technology at a time when accurate electronic documentation and the timely delivery of evidenced-based nursing care at the patient's bedside are crucial."

"The acquisition of iCare will allow instructors and students to have complete integration of the textbook, the simulation lab and the classroom," said John J. Jordan, digital acquisitions editor for Nursing Education at Wolters Kluwer Health. "We see the iCare EMR as a key asset in our strategy to continuously evolve our education curriculum and tools and provide a key interface for future simulation products."