4th Generation Virtual Patients

Virtual Patients are not new. They have been around in some guise or other for over 30 years.

Gradually, over time, they have evolved and morphed:

1st generation – linear cases, usually in HEIDR format (Hist, Exam, Ix, Dx, Rx)
2nd generation – branching cases with hyperlinks
3rd generation – multimedia-rich, virtual worlds, pretty, expensive
4th generation – modular, light, repurposable, semantically linked, learning analytics

We are currently rewriting OpenLabyrinth from the ground up.

This will enable simple easy light cases but also provide access to very powerful features. Many of the limitations previously found in virtual patients will be resolved.

But we also want to stay away from features that have been shown to be educationally distracting. Make an interface too cute and, while it may initially impress, it often just gets in the way of learner discovery. Virtual worlds, which initially looked promising, were mostly an example of this.

Onwards and upwards, building on lessons learned.

When we have good working foundation for OpenLabyrinth v3, we will publish it at

http://demo.openlabyrinth.ca/

Watch this space!

OpenLabyrinth v3 development in progress

Great news. We have obtained funding from a number of sources and are currently engaged in a full rewrite of OpenLabyrinth.

Version 3 will be open-source, licenced under GNU, and will support a wider range of features than version 2. If you are interested, you can take a wee peek at an alpha version running at http://demo.openlabyrinth.ca – as cases and features are added, you will be able to check them out there.

Contact us if you are interested in collaborating on this promising new development. At present, try the following: topps AT ucalgary DOT ca

CHEC-CESC Virtual Patient Challenge 2011 for Medical Students

We are delighted that Carly Glasner at the University of Calgary Department of Family Medicine took 2nd place in this Virtual Patient Challenge, hosted by AFMC.

Carly has created an interesting series cases on prenatal care, which can be found at:

http://fmsharc.cfpc.ca/openlabyrinth/mstartnode.asp?mapid=79

She created the case using the VUE concept mapping tool from Tufts, and then did much of the leg work in fully fashioning the case on the CFPC SharcFM OpenLabyrinth server. We are also very grateful to Dr Sonya Lee, Janet Tworek and Chris Diamant for their help in assembling the case.

HSVO wins John Ruedy Award for Innovation in Medical Education

At the Canadian Conference on Medical Education last week, the John Ruedy Award for Innovation in Medical Education ( http://www.afmc.ca/awards-john-ruedy-e.php ) was presented to the Health Services Virtual Organisation (http://hsvo.ca ) for their work on simulation integration.

The HSVO team made extensive use of OpenLabyrinth in their learning designs. While the Savoir and Argia middleware layers acted as the technical connectors, allowing bridging between many different types of simulators and simulation resources, the OpenLabyrinth engine provided excellent bridging case material in many aspects of the case designs. OLab VPs were used as case initiators, debriefing tools and for collating many of the learning activities.

HSVO team members were based in multiple locations – the award is due to all their hard work, not just the award nominees. Our thanks go out to some great colleagues.

Virtual Patients for EMR teaching

There is some interesting work at the University of Calgary where we have been using OpenLabyrinth as the infrastructure in creating a pseudo-EMR (electronic medical record) interface.

Standard EMRs are not very useful for teaching and have many limitations. But we needed a tool to facilitate teaching for our students about key principles in EMR use. OpenLabyrinth provided a very useful framework to enable this.

Virtual Patients at Muster

At the Global Community Engaged Medical Education Muster (http://gcmem2010.flinders.edu.au/), hosted by Flinders University in the Barossa Valley, SA, there are two workshops on virtual patients.

The main platform being explored by workshop participants is OpenLabyrinth.

We welcome workshop participants – get in there and get your hands dirty.

OpenLabyrinth

virtual scenarios and education research