Technologies in medical and healthcare education: Looking back, the present and future visions
Martin Komenda
Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University
The lecture will look back at principal outputs which fall within the area of technological support in the education of clinical and healthcare disciplines. These outputs have had a positive influence on development in the environment of the MEFANET educational network. These activities might probably never have been supported at Czech and Slovak faculties without several key personalities, which will also be shortly introduced during the lecture. Principal projects solved by investigators from among active and productive MEFANET representatives will be introduced to describe some of the present activities. Future prospects will also be considered, aiming to outline possible trends that we might follow together. However, we will always have to keep in mind that we can only use suitable and easy ways to combine time-tested methodical approaches with modern information and communication technology. We must never forget about users themselves, i.e. students, teachers and curriculum designers, as well as the management of departments, which should be able to embrace these teaching innovations as time- and energy-saving measures, rather than being confronted with the necessity of learning new technical skills.