I will list some of the useful digital resources used in medicine today. My focus is mainly videos and medical illustrations which are useful for first year medicine. This list is not exhaustive and additional useful resources will be found in due time and added on here. Check back here often.
It should be noted here that medical illustrations and multimedia resources fall into three main types - public access, commercial packages (some are available free of charge/FOC or with subscription) and institutional repositories (usually FOC). Some institutions also have repositories but which do not allow outside access.
Most medical schools also have medical libraries that subscribe to some of the medical illustrations and multimedia databases or repositories (repositories is the buzz word today). Please enquire from the respective library at your university. For our USM Medical School, the medical library subscribes to many such repositories. However, the use of such resources is minimal, if any as students are unaware or don't know or don't find out. It does take time to find these resources and to familiarise how to navigate them in order to see their worth.
It should also be noted that some illustrations are too simple for first year medicine. They are meant mainly for insight. Students must try to obtain good illustrations from the various resources, especially those with a lot of details and with good layout that is not confusing.
Public Access
YouTube medical videos
- Stanford University - Vascular Disorders of the Central Nervous System
- Human Body - Nervous System
- 3D medical animation by Nucleus Medical Art -- demo reel of animations (in Spanish)
- Patient Education Reference Library (PERL) - Orthopedics -- Knee surgery
-- Normal Anatomy of the Upper Cervical Spine -- Regions of the Spine (female) -- Regions of the Spine (male) -- Anatomy of the Knee Joint -- Vertebral Column -- Cervical Spine and Intervertebral Disc Anatomy (male) -- Cervical Spine and Intervertebral Disc Anatomy (female)
- Nucleus Medical Media - Spontaneous Vaginal Delivery (SVD) -- Cesarean (C-section) --
Commercial (demo/subscription)
A.D.A.M. Images
McGraw-Hill AccessMedicine
Elsevier medical images
Nucleus Medical Art -- Anatomy of the Skull -- Menstruation
Institutional
NWTC Medical Illustration Library
Showing posts with label digital resources in medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital resources in medicine. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Digital natives in education and work (Part 2)
We'll continue discussion of hardware since there are a lot of gadgets in the market worldwide today. The world today is a mobile world, so gadgets are made for people on the move (roving, if you please). Some of the interesting gadgets available at the time of this writing include the following:
Apple products: iPhone, iPad, iPod, MacBook Air
BlackBerry products: BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
Sony products: VAIO laptops, Sony tablet, digital cameras, camcorders, TV, home theatres
Acer products: notebooks, tablet
Hewlett-Packard products: laptop-tablet
If you own or use any of the above, then you must be IT-savvy and a digital native/migrant.
Lately, I have seen the tablets made their in-roads into academia and the health care. The light-weight laptops (notebooks) now compete with the thin wafer-like tablets. The tablet is preferred by new students who are starting out in studying medicine. The tablet is preferred by IT-savvy doctors in the hospital setting especially in the orthopedic and neuro wards. The tablet is preferred by medical specialists who are also lecturing, especially on radio-imaging techniques in Radiology. It therefore looks like the tablet is here to stay for quite some time. What is the tablet good for? Please write in if you are using your tablet for something or something else. Let's share that knowledge about using the tablet.
Are other gadgets useful for education? Yes, definitely - the digital camera. What is the digital camera good for? Depends on what the objects of photography are. Photographic objects can be patients or their body parts, normal or diseased. Remember, there is an ethical code that guides us in taking photographs of patients and their body parts. Then what can we do about this restriction? Can we simply take photos of patients and their body parts? Certainly no! But there's a leeway if you are working in the photography department, still the photographs have a purpose - for teaching, research or archive. Patients' rights and privacy are guarded at each hospital. In fact, cameras (camera-fitted phones or smartphones) may not be brought into hospitals, clinics and treatment centres. Even if they are brought to hospital, they must be switched off. As such the digital camera (and camcorder, camera-fitted phones or smartphones) are useless in the true setting where everything must remain private (ideally). What's the point of learning then? The restrictions should mean that one needs prior permission in order to photograph a patient or a patient's body parts. Students are reminded that they need permission from their lecturers/superiors before they can photograph patients/body parts while in the clinics and wards. Violation of the ethical code and hospital rules is common as our students and society do not know that it is wrong to take photographs of patients/body parts and worse still, to make them public - to post them on the Internet and elsewhere. Even though rules and regulations are in place, they are broken more often than not. It's human to err.
Apple products: iPhone, iPad, iPod, MacBook Air
BlackBerry products: BlackBerry smartphones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablet
Sony products: VAIO laptops, Sony tablet, digital cameras, camcorders, TV, home theatres
Acer products: notebooks, tablet
Hewlett-Packard products: laptop-tablet
If you own or use any of the above, then you must be IT-savvy and a digital native/migrant.
Lately, I have seen the tablets made their in-roads into academia and the health care. The light-weight laptops (notebooks) now compete with the thin wafer-like tablets. The tablet is preferred by new students who are starting out in studying medicine. The tablet is preferred by IT-savvy doctors in the hospital setting especially in the orthopedic and neuro wards. The tablet is preferred by medical specialists who are also lecturing, especially on radio-imaging techniques in Radiology. It therefore looks like the tablet is here to stay for quite some time. What is the tablet good for? Please write in if you are using your tablet for something or something else. Let's share that knowledge about using the tablet.
Are other gadgets useful for education? Yes, definitely - the digital camera. What is the digital camera good for? Depends on what the objects of photography are. Photographic objects can be patients or their body parts, normal or diseased. Remember, there is an ethical code that guides us in taking photographs of patients and their body parts. Then what can we do about this restriction? Can we simply take photos of patients and their body parts? Certainly no! But there's a leeway if you are working in the photography department, still the photographs have a purpose - for teaching, research or archive. Patients' rights and privacy are guarded at each hospital. In fact, cameras (camera-fitted phones or smartphones) may not be brought into hospitals, clinics and treatment centres. Even if they are brought to hospital, they must be switched off. As such the digital camera (and camcorder, camera-fitted phones or smartphones) are useless in the true setting where everything must remain private (ideally). What's the point of learning then? The restrictions should mean that one needs prior permission in order to photograph a patient or a patient's body parts. Students are reminded that they need permission from their lecturers/superiors before they can photograph patients/body parts while in the clinics and wards. Violation of the ethical code and hospital rules is common as our students and society do not know that it is wrong to take photographs of patients/body parts and worse still, to make them public - to post them on the Internet and elsewhere. Even though rules and regulations are in place, they are broken more often than not. It's human to err.
Digital natives in modern education and work (Part 1)
Since the digital revolution began some time in the early 1980s, we have broadly and arbitrarily categorised users as "digital natives" (those born after 1982) and "digital migrants" (those born before 1982). I was born in 1958; that makes me a digital migrant. I am therefore not a good user of digital technology (not IT savvy). The focus of digital technology worldwide today is to cater for the wants and needs of digital natives (they would be less than 30 years old today). If you are less than 30 years old, you are considered a digital native. That also means you are an able and good user of digital technology; you are highly receptive to almost all technology that comes on the market today and in the future. You are IT savvy (more often than not). Now that digital technology is here to stay, how does that affect our education - the way we learn, and the way we work, now and in the future?
Let's discuss hardware first. Well, all I can envision is the laptop is here to stay and everyone wants to own one. If you have not got your own laptop, then it is high time to save for one. In Kota Bharu, there in KB Mall and a shop called Monaliza that sells reasonably priced new laptops which come with pre-installed bundled software. Nowadays one can get a new laptop for RM1,200 (which translates to saving RM200/mo for 6 months). Acer brand has been dependable and reliable so far for me. I wouldn't buy other brands. For SONY brand sold in Malaysia, these laptops cost ~RM1,4000 and are made in China and often develop some problems later on. The last SONY laptop I had went for repairs at a SONY repair centre in Jalan Gajah Mati. If you really need a SONY laptop, then buy ones that are priced above RM7,000 each - these are assembled in Japan and are genuine machines (check the packaging) - buy them from Queensbay Mall, Penang. The external hard disk (HD) is a necessity to store a lot of multimedia files and high-resolution (hi-res) digital images in the form of digital albums. Today, an external HD (298GB) costs ~RM300. Toshiba and Imation are reliable brands (I use a Toshiba) - buy external HD from Monaliza. A pen drive of 16GB is good to have to store some big files and presentations for a meeting or workshop. A good place to bargain for pen drives is a small shop in First Avenue, Penang (on the third floor) - it is called Asus Shop (smthg like that) - here the pen drives come in attractive shapes and will make you crazy - the store assistants are helpful too, in case you don't recognise pen drives. Harvey Norman in Queensbay Mall, Penang used to sell 16GB Toshiba pen drives. Buy lots of pen drives as you will them at odd times when there are no shops around. A digital camera, either built-into a mobile phone or separately. The digital cameras have jumped from being 8 megapixels a few years ago to 10 megapixels now (which means each file captured occupies a larger footprint and needs a larger storage space). I keep 2 digital cameras for my hectic work (8 megapix and 10 megapix). In Kota Bharu, digital cameras can be bought at a small outlet on the ground floor in Billion Shopping Centre; the parent store is on the second floor - it also does digital camera repairs for a postal fee of RM25 if the camera is still covered by warranty - it ships the defective camera to KL - you pay for to-and-fro postal charges). Beware though, these digital cameras are made in China and tend to become faulty for no reason. That's what you get for cheap technology.
Let's talk about software in another post.
Let's discuss hardware first. Well, all I can envision is the laptop is here to stay and everyone wants to own one. If you have not got your own laptop, then it is high time to save for one. In Kota Bharu, there in KB Mall and a shop called Monaliza that sells reasonably priced new laptops which come with pre-installed bundled software. Nowadays one can get a new laptop for RM1,200 (which translates to saving RM200/mo for 6 months). Acer brand has been dependable and reliable so far for me. I wouldn't buy other brands. For SONY brand sold in Malaysia, these laptops cost ~RM1,4000 and are made in China and often develop some problems later on. The last SONY laptop I had went for repairs at a SONY repair centre in Jalan Gajah Mati. If you really need a SONY laptop, then buy ones that are priced above RM7,000 each - these are assembled in Japan and are genuine machines (check the packaging) - buy them from Queensbay Mall, Penang. The external hard disk (HD) is a necessity to store a lot of multimedia files and high-resolution (hi-res) digital images in the form of digital albums. Today, an external HD (298GB) costs ~RM300. Toshiba and Imation are reliable brands (I use a Toshiba) - buy external HD from Monaliza. A pen drive of 16GB is good to have to store some big files and presentations for a meeting or workshop. A good place to bargain for pen drives is a small shop in First Avenue, Penang (on the third floor) - it is called Asus Shop (smthg like that) - here the pen drives come in attractive shapes and will make you crazy - the store assistants are helpful too, in case you don't recognise pen drives. Harvey Norman in Queensbay Mall, Penang used to sell 16GB Toshiba pen drives. Buy lots of pen drives as you will them at odd times when there are no shops around. A digital camera, either built-into a mobile phone or separately. The digital cameras have jumped from being 8 megapixels a few years ago to 10 megapixels now (which means each file captured occupies a larger footprint and needs a larger storage space). I keep 2 digital cameras for my hectic work (8 megapix and 10 megapix). In Kota Bharu, digital cameras can be bought at a small outlet on the ground floor in Billion Shopping Centre; the parent store is on the second floor - it also does digital camera repairs for a postal fee of RM25 if the camera is still covered by warranty - it ships the defective camera to KL - you pay for to-and-fro postal charges). Beware though, these digital cameras are made in China and tend to become faulty for no reason. That's what you get for cheap technology.
Let's talk about software in another post.
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