Medical Education and the Internet

Recent technological advances will have a profound effect on medical education over the next few years. The most important trends include: the "consumerization" of computers leading to their wide spread use in the home; the evolution of traditional on-line services (CompuServe, America Online) into Internet access providers; the growth of the World Wide Web; the routine use of electronic mail for personal communication; the availability of hand held computing devices (personal digital assistants); the widespread use of ireless communication; the advent of inexpensive, desk-top CD-ROM publishing; and the increased use of open hardware and data standards.

Reaping the benefits of these innovations will require careful strategic planning. Poorly planned information technology initiatives are often costly in terms of money, time, and goodwill. We recommend that the following points be considered in any strategic plan concerned with medical education.

• Capitalize on the growing number of home computers.
  • Decreased need for centralized investment in equipment
  • Increased student convenience and satisfaction
  • Emerging external markets such as continuing education
• Move from a paper-bound to a "paper-on-demand" model.
  • Ubiquitous on-line access to information via the World Wide Web
  • Interactive course materials on CD-ROM
  • Hand held computing devices for patient care
  • Electronic medical records
• Use the Internet to facilitate collaborative work and study.
  • Archive of teaching materials (better coordination)
  • Cross links among disciplines (stronger integration)
  • Email or form based feedback (increased interaction)
• Use open, hardware independent standards whenever possible.
  • HTML, JPEG, and MPEG data standards
  • TCP/IP network standards
  • ISO CD-ROM standard
  • SMTP/MIME email standards
• Remember the "four efficiencies" of information technology and let them guide the strategic planning process. Does a proposed innovation allow students and faculty to:
  • Do more in less time?
  • Increase the diversity of what is done?
  • Communicate with others?
  • Transform the study process itself?

Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, Donald A. Norman, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993