Can the Internet widen participation in reproductive medicine education for professionals?

Background: Traditional campus-based models of education are unsuitable to many, particularly if in full-time employment supporting families, whereas the Internet now permits new models of education. Following an iterative process of development and evaluation in 2001, the University of Bristol launched a masters programme covering reproduction and development delivered principally over the Internet.

Methods: Students attend short biannual residential workshops and the rest of the course is delivered online.

Orthodontic referrals via TeleDent Southwest.

The information presented in this article must be interpreted with caution. Ideally the trial should have lasted longer because five of the seven participating dentists said they felt constrained from taking in more cases because access to TeleDent advice would cease before completion of all but the shortest of treatments. Second, the number of practitioners recruited into the trial was small, and the dentists chosen were highly selected.

Evaluation of an online postgraduate education programme.

Information technology supporting training in medicine is unstructured and critical evaluation of its use is lacking. The objective of the paper was the evaluation of an Internet-delivered postgraduate training course in medicine. The work took place in the Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol.

The use of teledentistry to provide GDPs with advice in orthodontics.

This article describes a pilot trial to determine whether the transmission of digitized clinical records of potential orthodontic cases supported by access to video and data conferencing may help to reduce the current high level of inappropriate referrals to consultant orthodontists in the UK.