Teaching medicine using hypertexts: three years of experience at the Ancona Medical School

摘要

The application of computers in medical education is proving to be a more and more powerful supplement to traditional educational methods and tools. Indeed, the hypertext-hypermedia methodology allows the teacher to produce electronic lessons and clinical simulations. Furthermore, the hypertext represents the ideal tool for presenting and discussing data and opinions in clinical meetings. Applications of these methods produced at the Ancona University Medical School and successfully applied in several educational projects are presented. Clinical simulations concerning asthma and other topics of Internal Medicine, as well as interactive lessons about rheumatoid arthritis, lymphomas and lung diseases are described as examples. This material uses hypertext-hypermedia systems available on PCs which combine text, graphics, sound, animations, and high-definition color pictures, and relate chunks of information in an associative manner. The coursewares were tested on students in the final year with encouraging results and have proved to be an ideal complement to bedside practice. The opinions of practitioners about medical therapy for rheumatic diseases have been diseases have been discussed during clinical meetings using a questionnaire structured in hypertext form. The user-friendly interfaces of the systems available allow such courses to be used and developed by physicians who are not literate in software production and without any support from an informatician.