Medical informatics is here to stay. Nevertheless, physicians in general and medical students in particular are often poorly prepared for the world of computers and telecommunication. In order to address this issue, we developed a forth year medical school elective for two medical students lasting four weeks. The course includes faculty from the College of Medicine, College of Engineering, and College of Education, as well as medical librarians, the Director of Distance Learning and the Director of Academic Computing.
Each student will have a work Station connected to the Internet, will have weekly tutorials and seminars, and a four week curriculum that includes 1) review of commonly used PC applications, 2) hospital based medical informatic systems, 3) using the Internet, Gofer, Mosaic, etc., 4) distance education and telemedicine.
The course was developed cooperatively with input from all three colleges and with the assistance of graduate students from the College of Education. Pre-course and post-course evaluations, computerized self-education, computer assisted instruction, etc., together with a flexible course design will provide an opportunity for enhanced medical informatics education in medical school.