As recently as half a decade ago, the technology available to consumers today would be nearly unbelievable. Similarly, the current medical education technology climate is tremendous, offering medical students new ways to converse with online patients and zoom in on microscopic parts of the human body from their computer or tablet screens.
Representatives from innovative medical education technology companies demonstrated new tools that could change the way future physicians are taught as part of a special meeting last month at the University of Texas at Austin. Faculty from the 11 schools in the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education initiative met with AMA leaders and University of Texas educators to discuss forward-thinking curricula that will prepare future physicians for an increasingly complex health care system. New educational technology was one of the primary topics of discussion.
Take a look at some of the technology that’s already being used at medical schools.
Virtual standardized patient
Developed at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies, the virtual standardized patient is part of an online “standard patient hospital,” in which medical students can talk directly to the “patient” and get real responses. Educators can create their own standardized patients, including a patient’s medical history, allergies, social history and more.
Each “character” can be set to answer truthfully or deceptively and even can ask questions of the student. The program tests students on their interviewing skills and forces students to learn how to ask patients the right questions to get a proper diagnosis.
“What do you do when a patient is in your room, there’s nobody there to help you and the patient says, ‘Doc, I’m in pain’?” said Thomas “Brett” Talbot, MD (pictured right), a research scientist at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “We’ve removed the scaffolding of the text up front that gives you all the hints. It’s up to you to generate your own scaffolding.”
3D exploration of the human body
The BioDigital Human gives students a chance to virtually dissect and manipulate the human anatomy. Educators can isolate a structure of anatomy and add text, export the structure and embed it into presentations. They also can save it online, let other BioDigital users see it and add their own annotations. With a cloud-based application like this one, it is possible to create a digital anatomy course online and share it between schools.
“This was not built to replicate the cadaver but to bring a learner up to a certain point on a learning curve,” said John Qualter, co-founder of BioDigital Systems and a faculty member at the New York University School of Medicine. “What if we all collaborated on this digital anatomy and you were able to access them? It’s all open for discussion.”
Simulated patient encounter
With iHuman, medical students can complete a total patient encounter, including performing a physical exam and ordering tests. Educators can create and share cases. To add a dimension of reality to the encounter, they also can use a repository of medical media assets, including radiographs, echocardiograms, electrocardiograms and dermatologic images, and cardiac sounds from the W. Proctor Harvey library. The software tracks each step a student makes during the patient encounter.
“We can assemble the most detailed data about the thinking of the student,” said Craig Knoche, founder of iHuman. “If someone comes in and complains of shortness of breath, we can tell immediately whether the student ascultated the heart in the right location, if they appropriately identified the third heart sound, if they immediately go to the differentials list and put ‘heart failure’ on it. The findings and judgments are available as data.”
The new technology incorporated into medical schools today and into the future isn’t meant to replace real patient encounters, anatomy labs and other experiences. Rather, educators are looking for technology that will enhance medical students’ education and offer more opportunities for learning.
Read more about the latest technology in medical education at AMA Wire®.
