The Virtual Practice

A virtual practice with more than 60 virtual patients covering the key areas of medical practice developed in collaboration with Dr Stephen Smith, Brown Medical School, forms an important component of IVIMEDS' educational services.  The virtual patients do not replace face-to-face clinical experience but provide a powerful adjunct and support for student learning.  They can provide an aid to learning and an authentic learning experience in both traditional and problem-based curricula and can also be used as the basis or framework for a curriculum.  The appearance of the same patient on a number of occasions in the curriculum helps students to appreciate the principles of continuity of care, an integrated approach to medical practice and a holistic approach to the management of patients.

The virtual patients developed by Stephen Smith are community-based, additional hospital-based patients are being created and added to the virtual practice by partner schools.  Each of the virtual patient cases is being further developed to incorporate learning objects including photographs, radiographs and other clinical images and materials from the IVIMEDS repository to add clinical authenticity.  Virtual patients provide a strong context for introducing interactive exercises to illustrate principles and concepts via a virtual tutor.  Teachers can decide whether they wish students to have access to the virtual tutor or rather have the students identify their own learning needs based upon their interactions with the virtual patient and browse or search repositories of content to find learning resources to meet those needs.  The IVIMEDS approach to virtual patients is flexible and presentation of the patient is adaptable to meet the needs of different learning styles.  Each of the virtual patient cases can be edited and customised for local use.

IVIMEDS virtual patients have been developed using an XML information model to provide consistency and compatibility with other systems.  The XML records are converted into conventional web pages and so can run in any web browser.  They are distributed as IMS content packages or as SCORM objects and are interoperable with e-learning platforms that support these standards.