The Hippocrates Project, established in 1987, is the hypermedia instructional development program of New York University Medical Center. It is a multidisciplinary, faculty-student effort to identify, study, and invent the variety of ways by which computer and communication technologies can enhance the learning process. The ultimate goal of the project is the transformation of the institution into a Knowledge Syncytium - a learning and problem-solving environment which supports access to information unfettered by time and space, which promotes the instantaneous communication of knowledge, and enhances both individual creativity and collaborative action.
Hippocrates has moved toward its long term objectives by implementing a software, hardware and network education infrastructure and by initiating programs to attain specific goals. More than one-hundred medical education modules have been produced. Most have become an integral part of the curriculum as either required exercises or as primary resource materials. Work is progressing to make all modules available over the Internet. The range of modules includes expository presentations, laboratory simulations, self-assessment and testing programs, three-dimensional anatomic reconstructions, animations, virtual reality environments, case studies, and databases for the medical humanities, infectious disease, patient care, the College Advisory Program, and the Curriculum. Hippocrates also administers email for all students and a large number of faculty and provides facilities for Web homepages for student organizations and for personal use.
The vision of and lessons learned by the Hippocrates Project are shared with a wide audience through talks and demonstrations to national organizations, seminars at other medical schools, leadership participation in a national consortium of medical schools, and by visits to the Hippocrates development laboratory by administrators and faculty of national and international schools in the health sciences, by teachers in K-12 schools, and by national political leaders.
Current areas of active development are the mapping of medical knowledge onto a scheme of medical terms, concepts, and relationships. This system will be used as a source for courseware creation, testing, curriculum evaluation, and to support the work of basic science and clinical faculty throughout the institution. For these purposes World-Wide-Web is being employed as the universal interface to large relational database repositories of medical knowledge. Additional projects include a multi-institutional, on-line hypermedia database of Literature, Arts, and Medicine for the Medical Humanities and the application of virtual reality environments to the diagnosis and treatment of Balance Disorders (i.e. dizziness).
For more information and examples, please visit:
Advanced Educational Systems
NYU School of Medicine, Coles 202
