We are delighted to read about University of California Irvine’s account of their iPads in use their cadaver laboratories. The following text is an excerpt from a June 6th posting on the MacHealthCare Website, in which the UC Irvine team give an in-depth account of their innovative approach in the teaching of anatomy.

The Logistics of iPads in the Anatomy Lab

On August 6, 2010, the medical students in the incoming class at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine were awarded their white coats. More interestingly, was the non-traditional gift these students were bestowed during this ceremony: an iPad, Apple’s new tablet device that had only debuted a few short months before. These iPads represent a major step forward in the new iMedEd Initiative at UCIrvine to develop a fully digital curriculum, a goal set forth by Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, Dean of the UCIrvine School of Medicine. The iMedEd Initiative, led by faculty director, Dr. Warren Wiechmann, was conceived out of efforts to blend technology into an innovative and interactive learning environment to facilitate a move away from the passive lecture model of conventional medical education approaches.

One of the first courses into which the iPads were integrated at UCIrvine is Anatomy. Anatomy has long been a critical part of medical education. Most of the learning in this course happens through active, hands-on exploration in a lab that commonly consists of donated cadavers draped in sheets and lying on rows of dissection tables. The introduction of 10 new iPads and enabling Internet connectivity within the lab was a groundbreaking addition for the UCIrvine lab this year. However, prior to making the iPads available for the students, there were several logistical issues that needed to be addressed to support them: (1) protecting them from the cadaver tissue and biohazardous materials in the lab; (2) loading relevant and effective software to facilitate the learning of anatomy; (3) determining the most efficient way for students to share documents with themselves, other students and faculty from inside the lab; and (4) establishing Internet connectivity to allow document sharing, access to external resources and handling updates of installed apps.

This is a brief video (above) demonstrating iPad usage in UCIrvine’s Anatomy lab. The iPad is being protected by a simple Ziploc bag and still maintains functionality with both a gloved hand and a stylus. The content being viewed on the iPad is the Modality Body App with the Thieme Atlas of Anatomy as well as the PocketBodyHD app by PocketAnatomy.

Protecting the iPads

Cadaver tissue and biohazardous materials are unavoidable in an anatomy lab. Unfortunately, these materials do not mix well with iPads and a need to protect them in a sanitary and waterproof manner is necessary. A comprehensive test and review of the market for suitable cases by the iMedEd team was cut short in favor of an admittedly unfashionable solution using Ziplock bags in an effort to get the iPads into the anatomy lab as quickly as possible (Figure 1).

Figure 1. iPad in Ziplock bag (Credit: UCIrvine).

Anatomy Apps for the iPads

The iPad serves as a preeminent platform to deliver rich, interactive multimedia presentations of information and gross anatomy is an ideal subject matter to complement the iPad’s features with its largely media-based approach to teaching, for example, utilizing images of body structures, radiographic films, MRI’s and videos of dissections. Accordingly, there are quite a few apps that effectively marry anatomy content and the iPad technology such as the Pocket Body HD app by Pocket Anatomy. Pocket Body allows its user to explore an anatomically correct human character with nine layers of musculoskeletal content that can be peeled away to study structures at the muscle, joints/ligaments and skeletal levels. A copy of this app was purchased for each anatomy iPad along with Epocrates Essentials, a mobile drug and disease reference. Though it is not a media intensive app, Epocrates provides quick and easily searchable access to a wealth of clinical information in a format that is also well-suited for the iPad interface.

The most interesting use of the iPad in the anatomy lab has been with OsiriX HD, an app that displays and supports interactive analysis of medical images. Full CT scans of two cadavers were captured allowing students to explore structures in OsiriX, for example, by zooming, panning and measuring them, to complement their learning experience before and after dissections.

Full Post: MacHealthCare Website

Pocket Anatomy, a Galway-based medical education software visualisation company has been awarded one of the five annual awards for Media in Education at this year’s European MEDEA 2010 Media in Education awards in Brussels (Nov 26th 2010). The aim of the MEDEA Awards is to encourage innovation and good practice in the use of media (audio, video, graphics and animation) in education. The awards also recognise and promote excellence in the production and pedagogical design of media-rich learning resources.

The company’s Pocket Heart and Pocket Body mobile medical education products were selected by a judging panel of 74 European eLearning practitioners, to participate in the MEDEA finals on November 25th/26th in Brussels, where they shared the stage with eight other organisations (including the BBC) from Belgium, Estonia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the UK. The judges described the Pocket Anatomy products as “self-learning instruments with high quality learning content, excellent visualization and animation combined with the right tools to enable learners to achieve clear learning goals – an excellent example of mobile learning.”

“To be awarded a European Media in Education award is a real honour, as it recognises the great work of our talented team. I’m really proud of what we have all achieved together, and I look forward to continued creative and innovative developments in 2011.” – Founder and CEO of Pocket Anatomy, Mark Campbell.

Below is a video demonstration of Pocket Anatomy’s latest app, Pocket Body:

The development of Pocket Anatomy’s recent medical software app, Pocket Body, is a great example of collaboration between a Galway-based company, graduate employees from GMIT, 5 NUIG Medicine students, and Enterprise Ireland. With the supervision of anatomy lecturer, Dr. Brendan Wilkins, third and fourth year medical students Robyn Concannon, John Duignan, Jacqueline Driscoll, Mark Gurney, and Paula Wrafter specified and wrote all of the content within the app (in excess of 30,000 words). Combined with the software design expertise within Pocket Anatomy, the result is an innovative and exciting app which will serve as a supplement to the lectures, classes and complementary texts used by the medical and health care student and provide a detailed source of human anatomical content, on demand, through the student’s own portable device. Campbell, believes that “This project demonstrates how SME’s can work closely with local academic expertise within Universities and IoT’s to accelerate new product development in order to create an innovative and meaningful educational resource.”

This medical software, featuring comprehensive human musculoskeletal anatomy content by means of a multi-layered sequence of high-definition photo-realistic illustrations of the human body, is a breakthrough in human anatomy education.

Helle Meldgaard, from the MEDEA Awards Organising Committee commented “This year we saw a good variety in the entries and excellent examples of media in education and training. We are particularly pleased to have seen such a good mix of user-generated and professionally produced media among the finalists coming in from across Europe and beyond. This year we also saw a number of high-quality media productions that come about as a result of European cross-border collaboration.”

Full press kit with print-resolution images of Pocket Body are available on the Pocket Anatomy website: www.PocketAnatomy.com/presskit

For further details please contact:
Mark Campbell
e-mail: mark.campbell@PocketAnatomy.com
Contact: +353 (0) 86 1013102 / +353 (0) 91 751 406

*****************************************************
ABOUT THE PRODUCT:

Pocket Body features a fully anatomically accurate human character with nine layers of musculoskeletal content, enabling the user to navigate from the skin layer through the superficial to deep musculature, and on through to ligaments and the skeleton. In each layer, structures are pinned for identification and associated with each pin is additional concise relevant information including clinical notes. All of the information is presented in an interactive, mobile and accessible format which takes full use of the features of the device on which the app runs (iPhone, iPad or iTouch). This is a marked contrast with the two-dimensional (2D) printed pictures and diagrams commonly used in the teaching of advanced human anatomy today. Additional features allow the user to make learning notes as they progress through the learning content, and also utilize the built-in quizzes as a self-test capability to assist in their learning and exam preparation.

Pocket Body will assist medical and other health care students gain a deep understanding of human musculoskeletal anatomy and assist in examination preparation. By making comprehensive human musculoskeletal anatomy content available on demand it will also act as a continuing anatomy resource throughout their degree programme, and as a reference on into the professional workplace.

As medical students and educators continue to embrace new technologies in their teaching and learning practices, Pocket Anatomy will continue to push the boundaries in the use of new technologies for the purposes of medical education.

ABOUT THE AWARDS
For more information about the MEDEA Awards: http://www.medea-awards.com

Source: RTE’s Daily Show

Over 200 people attended the inaugural awards show at the Gibson Hotel, Point Village, Dublin 1. Des Doris, founder/organiser of the Appys said each app entered was judged on seven different attributes including design, relevance to target market, utility and innovation. “We’ve been really impressed with the standard of entries for such a young media sector, and the app sector is a media sector in its own right now. While this year we’ve concentrated on mobile apps, next year we’d like to see tablet apps, social media apps and even Web TV apps entered. The app sector is changing the media landscape and the way many companies do business.”

Source: Digital Times

Source: MEDEA Awards Website
Text:

The Brussels-based MEDEA Secretariat announced the 9 finalists for the annual MEDEA awards on 4th October. The finalists are (in alphabetical order): BBC News School Report by BBC (UK), Bla Bla Bla e- democracy e minori by Civil Life Lab (Italy), Et si c’était toi by Lycée Technique du Centre (Luxembourg), Evolution of life by CNDP (France), Level 7 by Careersbox (UK), Monkey Labs by Die Keure/Larian Studios (Belgium), Pocket Anatomy by eMedia Interactive (Ireland), Theorem of Fire by Nafta Films (Estonia) and The Classroom by Cornerhouse (UK).

This year the competition attracted 140 entries from 31 countries, a very high number of entries despite the earlier closing date. For the first time, those entering could chose between submitting their entry as a production made by a professional company or semi-professional production unit or as one made by teachers, students, learners, parents, professors, individual or organisational representatives in primary education, secondary education, higher education, adult education, vocational education and/or training. This means that this year as well as the overall MEDEA Prize, there will also be a prize for the highest scoring entry in each of these two categories. There will also be a special prize, the European Collaboration Prize which is supported by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme. Prizes are sponsored by Adobe, Smart and AVID.

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Pocket Anatomy Review: How an App Could Cure Your Fear of Hospitals

Source: The Character Approved Blog

Several universities have already begun piloting programs to evaluate the impact of iPad devices with students, including Duke University in North Carolina (Winograd, 2010), Macquarie University in Sydney (Groom, 2010) and numerous other US institutions including Oklahoma State University, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, Reed College, George Fox University, Seton Hill University (Foresman, 2010), Stanford and the University of California Irvine (Vartabedian, 2010).

Interactive learning describes a method of acquiring information through hands on, interactive means and there are some compelling arguments to say that this mode of learning is much more effective than traditional lectures and didactic education. Time-on-task has long been thought to be an important predictor of student learning and achievement with Worthen et Al. (1994) reporting that students using an ILS (computerized integrated learning system) spend more time actively engaged in the learning tasks than students in the non-ILS classroom. Schwan et al (2004) argue that in contrast to their traditional, non-interactive counterparts, interactive dynamic visualisations allow users to adapt their form and content to their individual cognitive skills and needs. This argument is particular relevant to the study of human anatomy where Garg, Norman, & Sperotable, (2001); Hoyek, et al., (2009) established that visual or spatial skills are important for learning anatomy and a successful outcome requires a balance between memorization, understanding and visualization.

Many anatomists are now being asked to deliver required levels of core anatomical knowledge in a reduced time frame and often with fewer resources (Collins, 2009; Kaimkhani, et al., 2010). In light of these challenges, the teaching of undergraduate and post-graduate anatomy is continually being redefined. Methods used to deliver this teaching are evolving, including an increased use of visualizations through medical imaging and computer-based resources (Tam, et al., 2010) as a compliment to existing texts, lectures and laboratory sessions. It is within this environment that the iPad has potential to make a significant impact allowing students access to interactive educational content on demand and at a time and place of their choosing

However if the iPad is to have a revolutionary impact on medical education, the next stage in its effective appropriation will depend on the availability of high quality medical educational content and clear and evidence-based support that it is effective in supplementing learning. Whilst the proliferation of medical apps available on the Apple iTunes App Store, including those from Pocket Anatomy, suggests that medical content is becoming available, it will be interesting to monitor the findings from the universities who are incorporating the iPad into their learning curriculum.

I look forward to student feedback on how the iPad is impacting their medical education.

References

Collins, J.P. (2009). Are the changes in anatomy teaching compromising patient care? The Clinical Teacher, 6(1), 18-­1.

Foresman, C. (2010, 24 July 2010). IPad gets the university treatment this fall. Wired, from http://
www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/ipad-­goes-­under-­the-­gauntlet-­at-­universites-­this-­‐fall/

Garg, A., Norman G. & Sperotable, L. (2001).How medical students learn spatial anatomy. The Lancet, 357 (9253), 363-­‐364.

Groom, D. (2010), iPad Adventure Begins [Head of Ed Tech at the Learning and Teaching Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney.]. Blog posted to http://deangroom.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/ipad-adventure-begins/

Hoyek, N., Collet, C., Rastello, O.,Fargier, P.,Thiriet, P.,& Guillot, A.( 2009). Enhancement of Mental Rotation Abilities and Its Effect on Anatomy Learning.Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 21(3), 201­‐206.

Kaimkhani, Z.A., Masood Ahmed, Musaed AlFayez, Khalid Khushal, Muhammad Zafar, & 5, A.J. (2010). Does the existing traditional undergraduate Anatomy curriculum satisfy the senior medical students? South East Asian Journal of Medical Education, 3(2),20-­26.

Marks, S. (2000).The role of three dimensional information in healthcare and medical education: The implications for anatomy and dissection. Clin Anat, 13, 448‐452.

Tam, M.D.B.S., Hart, A.R., Williams, S.M., Holland, R., Heylings, D.,& Leinster, S.(2010). Evaluation of a computer program (‘disect’) to consolidate anatomy knowledge: A randomised–‐controlled trial. Medical Teacher, 32(3), 138-142.

Vartabedian, B. (2010, 9 August). iPads in Medical Schools – A Critical Step in Mobile Health.
http://33charts.com/2010/08/ipads-in-medical-schools-a-critical-step-in-mobile-health.html

Winograd, D.(2010).Duke University to use iPads for field research, from http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/21/duke-university-to‐use‐ipads‐for‐field‐research

Worthen, B. R., Dusen, L. M. V., & Sailor, P. J. (1994). A comparative study of the impact of integrated learning systems on students’ time-on-task. International Journal of Educational Research, 21(1), 25-37.

Pocket Anatomy has launched the latest update to Pocket Body, the full body human anatomy App, on the iTunes App store. Based on feedback from customers of Pocket Body 1.0, the Pocket Anatomy development team have made significant improvements to the usability and navigation in this latest release. Changes include the introduction of ‘Body Map’ (an enhanced navigation feature), updates to the human anatomy content, improvements to the navigation in the anatomy quiz, as well as enhancements to the personal note making feature.

The introduction of the ‘Body Map’ feature is a major step forward in navigation within Pocket Body v1.1. This feature allows the user to quickly navigate to any part of the body in a single action, thus saving time and improving the overall user experience. Changes to the rotate and the double-tap features are also included in this update which, in conjunction with the ‘Body Map’ will result in a smoother navigational experience throughout the app. A number of updates to the advanced anatomical content have also been made in this release, all based on feedback received from users of v1.0 of Pocket Body.

Pocket Anatomy CEO, Mark Campbell, commenting on the latest release says:

‘Pocket Body is creating a new wave of educational products for students of advanced anatomy. By including the users in the product development process we are developing breakthrough products with unprecedented benefits for our customers.

He continues:

Our products are developed by anatomy students for anatomy students and the interest in this latest release is testament that including the end user in the product development process results in a more customer centric product and, as a result, a more satisfied end-user.’

Pocket Body is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iTouch at $14.99 (iPhone/iPod Touch) / $19.99 (iPad). To purchase and download Pocket Body please visit http://www.pocketanatomy.com/itunes.php

About PocketAnatomy.com

PocketAnatomy.com develops applications to assist medical students, healthcare professionals, and the general public in visualizing the complexities of the human body in a novel format. PocketAnatomy.com was created in 2009 by Galway-based Interactive Media Design Company, eMedia Interactive Ltd.

eMedia is an award-winning Interactive Media Design Company, specializing in 3D medical animations and interactive technology enhanced learning resources for medical device companies and medical training institutes in Ireland, UK and USA.

To watch a video demonstration and learn more about Pocket Body please visit: www.PocketAnatomy.com

A full press kit with print-resolution images of Pocket Body is available on the Pocket Anatomy website: www.PocketAnatomy.com/presskit

For further details please contact:
Mark Campbell
eMedia Interactive Ltd
Contact: +353 (0)91 751 406
e-mail: mark@emedia.ie

Pocket Body is an Apple iPhone and iPad Application designed to assist busy medical and health care students learn clinically relevant human musculoskeletal anatomy through their iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch device. It also assists these students prepare for, and be successful in, their human anatomy examinations through its interactive content and self-test quiz modules.

The Irish Web Awards are open to anyone in Ireland and celebrate Ireland’s best and brightest web stars. Following close to two months of nominations and evaluation, the competition will culminate with an awards ceremony in the Mansion House in Dublin on Saturday, October 16 2010.

We look forward to seeing you there!