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AAMC Reporter: January 2006
A Word from the President:
"MedEdPORTAL: Virtually Yours"
"The process is easy, the feedback is
straightforward, and the result goes on your CV!"
The glowing report above comes from an early adopter
of MedEdPORTAL (Providing Online Resources To
Advance Learning), the association's Web-based resource
for sharing and publishing educational materials across
institutions and disciplines. Visit www.aamc.org/mededportal and you'll see the latest example of our
commitment to using state-of-the-art technology for
the improvement of medical education.
MedEdPORTAL is designed to provide an online inventory
of resources that addresses the needs of medical
educators across the continuum from undergraduate to
continuing medical education. An early version of
MedEdPORTAL, launched last year, already facilitates
access to a growing number of peer-reviewed medical
education resources, such as graphics, animations,
tutorials, lab manuals, assessment instruments, faculty
development materials, and computer-based resources,
including an inventory of virtual patients.
With MedEdPORTAL, users can quickly locate information
about high-quality, peer-reviewed teaching
material in both the basic and clinical sciences.
Teaching resources range from an audio program
featuring lung-sounds that is designed to enhance student
auscultation skills, to a series of videos that help
residency program directors identify the first signs
of fatigue in residents, to an interactive, multimedia
surgical simulation showing an integrated, evidence- based
framework for approaching common surgical
problems. And because copyright issues are addressed
during the submission process (authors continue to
retain their original copyrights), users can download
these resources worry-free of legal infringements.
The principal impetus for the creation of MedEdPORTAL
was the clear advantage of having an accessible central
inventory that obviates the need to duplicate valuable
(and expensive to produce) resources. Why invest
faculty time and effort reinventing a Web-based video
tutorial of breast examination, for example, when one
already exists and is referenced on MedEdPORTAL?
Given competing demands on faculty time and
tight budgets, having ready access to high-quality,
peer-reviewed materials from a trusted source is
a tremendous benefit.
This is particularly true when it comes to virtual patients
(VPs), which are interactive programs (Web-based or
software) that simulate real-life clinical scenarios. With
VPs, students can take patient histories, simulate many
aspects of the physical exam, and even make diagnostic
and therapeutic decisions, all without leaving the classroom
or the comfort of one's desk. In keeping with their
sophistication, these media-rich programs are both
labor- and resource-intensive. Production time can take
as long as two years and can cost up to $100,000 or
more. Not surprisingly, a recent survey found that only
a few medical schools are currently producing them.
Yet the educational value of VP technology is indisputable.
Perhaps most important, VPs give students
realistic, "face to face" experiences that can be repeated
as often as necessary with both routine and uncommon
clinical situations, many of which they might not otherwise
encounter. Using MedEdPORTAL's virtual patient
inventory, users can locate VPs covering a wide variety
of clinical scenarios, all the way from pneumonia and
obesity to the Prader-Willi syndrome.
While MedEdPORTAL's VP inventory has quickly
grown to over 100 scenarios, we've only begun to
scratch the surface of what this technology can do for
medical education. In the coming months, the AAMC
will target content development in areas that are
currently underrepresented in the inventory.We will
also begin working with a variety of specialty organizations
to promote the submission of discipline-specific
materials and encourage participation of discipline-specific
reviewers.
Further, as MedEdPORTAL continues to develop, we
hope it will address the needs of those medical educators
who invest time, effort, and intellectual capital in
the development and assessment of electronic teaching
materials. With over 290 submissions from 71 U.S. and
Canadian medical schools in its first year, MedEdPORTAL
has already provided the opportunity for faculty members
to submit creative work for formal peer review.
Indeed, MedEdPORTAL's creation stemmed largely
from efforts by the AAMC's Group on Educational
Affairs (GEA), which wished to provide appropriate
faculty recognition to encourage the development of
effective electronic teaching materials.
The preliminary feedback we've received has been quite
positive, with many users and groups expressing their
great enthusiasm regarding the potential of such a publication
outlet. Moreover, eight academic societies and
special-interest groups have expressed a desire to partner
with MedEdPORTAL to facilitate the dissemination of
their educational materials. Partnerships such as these
will promote the submission of discipline-specific materials
and encourage the participation of specialist reviewers.
Additionally, the AAMC has joined the MedBiquitous
Consortium, an accredited developer
of information technology standards for health
care education and competence assessment. The
technical standards developed through MedBiquitous
are designed to support the ongoing education and
performance of health care learners by improving
and integrating access to educational resources such
as those inventoried through MedEdPORTAL.
Watch for the next upgrade of MedEdPORTAL to be
unveiled this spring. Added features will enable users
to perform keyword and more complex searches, and
will allow faculty members to monitor where submitted
items stand in the peer-review process and identify
those institutions or individuals that have accessed
their resources.
As MedEdPORTAL enters its second year, we hope that it
will become a "one-stop shop" for locating information
about high-quality, peer-reviewed educational resources.
And we hope that educators will use it not only to share
their own resources, but also to collaborate with others
in their respective fields to continue to improve the quality
of the educational resources available to our students.
Jordan J. Cohen, M.D.
AAMC President
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