Newsletter #6
MedBiquitous Consortium Newsletter #6
2 May 2002
Published by the MedBiquitous Consortium
Contents:
- Community Code is here!
- Latest Agenda for May 15 and 16 Annual Conference
- Creating affordable, effective online learning
1. Community Code is here!
MedBiquitous Community Code is ready for release! The software will be available through the MedBiquitous Website, http://www.medbiq.org/. Consortium members will receive email messages that provide a unique user name and password that they can use to log into the Developer page, where they can download the software and find out about technical requirements. For a description of the Community Code features and benefits, see the Community Code Overview. You can view the press release Tuesday from http://www.medbiq.org/news/press_releases/index.html.
Member feedback is key to the development of a strong set of community code. The first phase of this software release will be a Beta phase during which MedBiquitous developers will work closely with members and gather user feedback regarding software requirements and desired enhancements. This provides members with an important opportunity to be fully a part of the MedBiquitous software development process and request the changes that they most want to see. Depending on the scope of the request, some enhancements may be made immediately, while others will go through Consortium working groups.
2. Latest Agenda for May 15 and 16 Annual Conference
The Annual Conference on May 15 and 16 has assembled an array of outstanding experts on a variety of topics relevant to online medical communities and the technology that MedBiquitous is developing. See the conference agenda at http://www.medbiq.org/events/conferences/annual_conference/May2002agenda.pdf. Speakers include Michael Magee, M.D., Senior Medical Advisor from Pfizer whose studies on patient-doctor relationships provide a key perspective for MedBiquitous and its members, and Jim Cashel, M.D., a recognized expert on online communities who publishes the Online Community Report (http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com).
3. Creating affordable, effective online learning
Many non-profit organizations complain about the expense of developing online learning, while for-profit groups wish they could better leverage the learning resources that they have. A model called SCORM offers a way for organizations to do just that. Created by the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (ADL), SCORM is a set of specifications that describe learning objects and the sharing of those objects. This results is online learning development that is faster, cheaper, and more effective. MedBiquitous plans to work with ADL to customize SCORM for professional medicine. Leaders from the ADL co-lab will be speaking at the upcoming MedBiquitous Annual Conference. To learn more about SCORM, visit http://www.adlnet.org.
