Evaluation of a Training Program to Improve Organizational Capacity for Health Systems Analytics.

Objective: The Leadership in Analytics and Data Science (LEADS) course was evaluated for effectiveness. LEADS was a 6-month program for working biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) professionals designed to improve analytics skills, knowledge of enterprise applications, data stewardship, and to foster an analytics community of practice through lectures, hands-on skill building workshops, networking events, and small group projects.

Methods: The effectiveness of the LEADS course was evaluated using the Kirkpatrick Model by assessing pre- and postcourse knowledge, analytics capabilities, goals, practice, class lecture reaction, and change in the size of participant professional networks.

Curriculum inventory: Modeling, sharing and comparing medical education programs.

Abstract descriptions of how curricula are structured and run. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) MedBiquitous Curriculum Inventory Standard provides a technical syntax through which a wide range of different curricula can be expressed and subsequently compared and analyzed. This standard has the potential to shift curriculum mapping and reporting from a somewhat disjointed and institution-specific undertaking to something that is shared among multiple medical schools and across whole medical education systems.

Virtual patients come of age.

On-screen simulations of clinical settings have been used for educational purposes since the 1970s. Despite this, it is only now that these 'virtual patients' are increasingly forming a part of the medical education mainstream. Enabling factors for these changes include a requirement for more assured clinical encounters, changes in patient availability (in particular, in tertiary contexts), diminishing technical and cost barriers and ongoing changes in educational practices as a whole.

eViP: sharing virtual patients across Europe.

Virtual Patients are interactive computer programs that simulate real life clinical scenarios for educational purposes. The European Commission co-funded Electronic Virtual Patient (eViP) programme is a collaboration among 8 universities working towards creating a shareable bank of virtual patients. eViP is creating an application profile of the MedBiquitous Virtual Patient specification to enable the exchange of interoperable virtual patient activities across institutions.

An XML standard for virtual patients: exchanging case-based simulations in medical education.

Virtual Patients are computer-based simulations of a clinical encounter where the user plays the role of a healthcare provider while receiving in-context instruction. This unique pedagogical approach enables active case-based learning for learners. Academic institutions around the world have developed high-quality virtual patients using many different authoring and playback technologies.

The MERG Suite: Tools for discovering competencies and associated learning resources.

Background: As the demands for competency-based education grow, the need for standards-based tools to allow for publishing and discovery of competency-based learning content is more pressing. This project focused on developing federated discovery services for competency-based medical e-learning content.

Methods: We built a tool suite for authoring and discovery of medical e-learning metadata.

Sharing innovation: the case for technology standards in health professions education.

Information technologies have provided fertile ground for innovation in healthcare education, but too often these innovations have been limited in scope and impact. One way of addressing these limitations is the development of common and open technology standards to scale innovation across organizational boundaries. Research on the diffusion of standards indicates that environmental forces, such as regulatory changes, top-down management support, and feasibility are key determinants of standards adoption.

Adopting e-learning standards in health care: competency-based learning in the medical informatics domain.

Like many forms of education, health professions education is increasingly competency-based. At the same time, there is growing use of e-learning technologies, which can be linked to competencies via emerging e-learning standards. Health care has been slow to adopt competencies and e-learning standards.

A standards-based approach for facilitating discovery of learning objects at the point of care.

Recent concerns about the quality and safety of healthcare practice provide an imperative for discovering and accessing learning resources. The growing ubiquity of the Internet, World Wide Web, and on-line educational content provide opportunity for healthcare practitioners to identify and master learning in a granular and rapid fashion. The e-learning community at large has developed a number of standards to facilitate interoperability of learner competencies, metadata describing on-line content, and packaging and navigation of such content.