Swiss and British imaging specialists have created a prototype for an Internet-based nuclear medicine tutorial program. The group, lead by Drs. Frank-Günter Füchsel and Rolf Heckemann, presented the Medical Tutorial Modelling Language (MedTML) in a poster at the 2003 Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting in New Orleans.
"MedTML was designed as an electronic framework supporting all aspects of image-based communication," wrote Füchsel, who is from Inselspital University Hospital in Bern in Switzerland. Heckemann is at the Imperial College School of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London. "Learners can interactively interrogate pathology-oriented case files with image synopsis."
MedTML is based on an open-standard software platform (XML) and supports the separation of layout and design from content. A teacher creates the images using the special authoring software. The information is downloaded to a server, where a designer has created instructional design templates (IDT). The cases are reformatted into HTML and can then be accessed by the students over the Internet.
"In its current incarnation, MedTML consists of an XML Document Type Definition and a set of XSLT stylesheets for generating HTML+JavaScript output from XML documents that conform to the DTD," explained Heckemann in an email to AuntMinnie.com. "It builds on Cocoon, which is an XML publishing framework."
The authors created two types of content: "Just-in-case" refers to a time gap between knowledge acquisition and use. These include general medical principles, manual skills (e.g. intubation), and emergency skills (CPR). "Just-in-time" learning is knowledge for a particular situation. This information is generally available in a reference format and is subject to rapid changes (such as cancer therapies) or is rarely needed (e.g. the treatment of mushroom poisoning).
MedTML offers a mix of just-in-case and just-in-time information for all modalities, including scintigraphy, PET, CT, MRI, x-ray, and ultrasound. The student has the option of comparing the nuclear medicine images with alternative imaging modalities in order to gain a better understanding of "pathology as well as individual imaging techniques in the hierarchy of the diagnostic tree," the authors explained.
Because the content is created separately from the output format, educators have the option of creating their own templates that best suit their teaching strategy.
"I would be happy to share the code I've written with anyone, but I would not now recommend using MedTML for building a new educational Web site," Heckemann wrote. "MedTML was originally conceived as a content management and presentation system for image-based teaching materials. As such, it faces strong competition from generic content management systems, such as Zope." For more information, contact Heckemann at [email protected].
By Shalmali PalAuntMinnie.com staff writer
July 16, 2003
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