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What’s your perfect idea for a medical app?

The American Medical Association (AMA) is harnassing the innovative power of the people in its “AMA App Challenge”. What do you think would be the perfect app for medical students, residents, and/or practicing physicians in their day-to-day life?

This challenge is the perfect opportunity for all those with great app ideas but are too busy (or lazy) to do the technical, legal, and business groundwork to make the idea a reality. The down side is that once you submit the idea, AMA has full proprietary ownership of it.

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By |2019-01-28T22:57:41-08:00Mar 31, 2011|Social Media & Tech|
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Article Review: Role of instructional technologies in medical education

InstructionalTechWordArt

A conference called “A 2020 Vision of Faculty Development Across the Medical Education Continuum” was held at Baylor College of Medicine in 2010. At this conference, experts convened to discuss the changing role of technologies in medical education.

Their conclusions were summarized in this Academic Medicine article, which discusses 5 trends and 5 recommendations.

Trends

  1. Explosion of new information: It has been postulated that the world’s body of knowledge will double every 35 days by 2015. We are in an age of information explosion. Physicians will have to be able to process an ongoing onslaught of information throughout their career. Learning how to sustain lifelong learning will be critical. 
  2. Digitization of all information: Medical records are slowly transitioning to an all-electronic format. Also in the age of Web 2.0, much of the digital content in health care are posted by the learners. Medical schools and residency programs will have to shift their approach to teaching,  disseminating, filtering, and supporting learning in this digital age.
  3. New generation of learners: Learners in medical schools are primarily “digital natives”. They have grown up with primarily digital textbooks and references. They have grown up with Facebook and Google. In contrast, educators are usually “digital settlers” — not “born digital” but now “live digital”.
  4. Emergence of new instructional technologies: In the Web 2.0 age, there are a myriad of online tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and virtual learning environments. 
  5. Accelerating change: Computers will increasingly play a greater role in our everyday lives. I imagine something like the Minority Report movie. The future is almost here.

Recommendations

  1. Use technology to support learning: Technology shouldn’t replace face-to-face learning but rather supplement areas which are better served using technology. Technology definitely helps with geographically distant learning groups, teaching deliberate practice using simulation, and individualizing learning plans.
  2. Focus on the fundamentals: Keep your eye on the prize. Don’t be tempted to use the new technologies for the sake of being current. First and foremost, focus on learner needs and the course objectives.
  3. Allocate a variety of resources: Faculty should be taught how to effectively use instructional technologies in faculty development workshops. Furthermore, “e-learning specialists” should be available to help faculty create effective courses. These specialists include Web designers, videographers, and e-learning management system experts. 
  4. Support and recognize faculty as they adopt new technologies: Institutional grants should be created to support faculty who want to adopt new instructional technologies. Furthermore, University promotion committees should value e-learning teaching modalities as academic scholarship. I wholeheartedly support this second statement– my blog is still considered a “hobby” rather an academic pursuit. Good thing I love doing this.
  5. Foster collaboration: We, as educators, need to share our ideas and resources nationally and internationally. Examples include the Health Education Assets Library (HEAL), MedEdPORTAL. 

Reference
Robin BR, McNeil SG, Cook DA, Agarwal KL, Singhal GR. Preparing for the Changing Role of Instructional Technologies in Medical Education. Acad Med. 2011 – in early press. PMID: 21346506.

 

By |2016-11-11T18:58:12-08:00Mar 28, 2011|Education Articles, Medical Education, Social Media & Tech|
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Hot off the press: MediBabble app

 

MedibabbleLogoEver since my post about the top medical apps, I have been inundated with people asking me to review their apps. One has stood out.

Medibabble is a real-time medical translation app and is now available for FREE. It was created by two innovative UCSF medical school graduates, Dr. Alex Blau and Dr. Brad Cohn. This app contains an extensive preset list of history questions and physical exam commands. When you click on a sentence, the app will translate and speak the sentence in one of 5 languages (Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Haitian Creole).

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By |2016-11-11T18:59:26-08:00Feb 17, 2011|Social Media & Tech|
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The Superbowl of Blogs: Vote us for "Best Clinical Sciences Blog"

 

award_lrMedgadget annually hosts a contest for the best medical blogs. It’s the Superbowl of blogs.

Our blog was nominated for the Best New Medical Blog last year, but got our butt kicked.

This year, we’re honored to be a finalist in the Best Clinical Sciences Blog category. That’s the great news. Unlucky for us, we are in the same category as the juggernauts EMCrit (also nominated in the overall Best Medical Blog category) and Resus.M.E. I do love the fact that the EM specialty is dominating with 3 finalists in this list of 5.

 

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By |2017-03-05T14:18:34-08:00Feb 5, 2011|Social Media & Tech|
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