App-lied Technology

Mobile apps aid learning and practicing medicine

One of the great challenges of medical education is imparting a level of practical skills that equals and complements the strong didactic learning students get during medical school. Clinical rotations, patient simulators, patient “actors” — even anatomical dissection — are among many methods of teaching these sensory skills, yet graduating U-M Medical School students have reported in exit interviews that they lack full confidence in their hands-on abilities.

Now mobile apps have joined the skill-based educational arsenal, merging learning with convenience as technology continues to provide new avenues for reaching students and maximizing learning opportunities. Waiting for a bus? Why not challenge yourself to learning heart sounds? Your smart phone is probably in your hand anyway.

Professor Emeritus of Cardiology Richard Judge (M.D. 1951, Residency 1957) and Medical School Media Services Manager Chris Chapman have collaborated on several projects that use technology to improve learning and skill acquisition. One of those projects included a Web-based interface for learning heart sounds, providing 24 well-known variations to help students learn to distinguish among them.

The heart sound challenge was widely used but not very portable. With the iPhone, the smart phone of choice for a majority of students, Chapman saw the opportunity to bring portability to the challenge, and at the same time ramp up student engagement by adding game-like qualities — a technological world it’s safe to call familiar to most students.

Learning to distinguish among the different sounds the heart makes is difficult to master. “We needed to create an environment where someone would listen to something over and over, and not make it boring,” Chapman says. With the help of Bruce Maxim, associate professor of computer and information science at U-M Dearborn, who teaches a course in game development — and his students — Chapman, Judge and colleagues worked out an initial design. Maxim’s students did the programming. “We performed usability testing throughout the process,” Chapman adds. “Students liked it, and they kept going until they could identify the sounds and get a perfect score.”

The Heart Sounds Challenge app was released on iTunes in August 2011. “We’ve learned that we’re good at teaching science, but less good at teaching skills,” Judge says. But given the success of the Web-based version at the U-M, now also in use at Dartmouth Medical School, Chapman and Judge are excited about the possibilities of the app for anywhere, anytime skill-building.

“Using a program like this helped me gain confidence in my ability to use my stethoscope,” says Erin Strong. “As a third-year student who sees patients, I know I’m being judged by the residents on my skills as well as the confidence I project.”

The iPhone’s younger sibling, the iPad, provides residents the essentials needed for education, patient care and other functions in the Department of Anesthesiology — the first residency program to use a paperless environment.

There are apps for patients, too. UMSkinCheck allows users to complete and store a full body photographic library, track detected moles and lesions, access informational videos and literature, and fill out a melanoma risk calculator. —SUSAN TOPOL

For a complete list of U-M mobile apps, visit mobileapps.its.umich.edu/apps.

Play the online version of the Heart Sounds Challenge

 

First Annual Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium for Health and Social Justice

The first annual Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium for Health and Social Justice was a global event, drawing speakers and presenters from around the world on March 26 to discuss such topics as curricula as an agent of social change, the concept of health equity, and innovations in global engagement. The symposium, co-sponsored by the Medical School and the national organization Physicians for Human Rights, honors Parikh, a U-M medical student who was killed in a motor vehicle accident in Uganda in 2011 while on a Fogarty Fellowship. —RK

 

New Leadership for Emergency Medicine

Robert W. Neumar, M.D., Ph.D., a renowned expert in brain damage after cardiac arrest or head trauma, is the new chair of the Medical School Department of Emergency Medicine, effective July 1. Neumar succeeds William Barsan, M.D., who led the department since its establishment in 1999 and remains on the U-M faculty.

Neumar comes to the U-M from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where he was an associate professor of emergency medicine and associate director of the Center for Resuscitation Science. Along with maintaining an active clinical practice at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Neumar conducted extensive research focused on understanding the mechanisms of brain injury, and developing therapies to minimize brain damage and improve brain recovery after cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury.

Neumar has a 17-year track record of continuous NIH funding and is certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine. A fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, he is a recipient of ACEP’s Award for Outstanding Contribution in Research.

His appointment brings Neumar back to the state of Michigan where he received his Ph.D. in physiology from Wayne State University. He received his M.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and completed his internship and residency at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as research fellowships at Pitt and Wayne State. —KG