Posts tagged: mobile learning

A presentation by Christoph Pimmer, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

Pimmer introduces MobileMed, a mobile consultation and learning system. The project’s main goal is to support the communication of clinical doctors. Although learning is not the focus of individual action in a clinical environment, doctors (as much as everybody else) learn through interaction with colleagues, they learn both for work and through work. Technology can not only support such learning, but rather enable it in the first place. Pimmer and his colleagues develop a smartphone application for medical doctors in an attempt to improve their professional communication.

Clinical communication in Switzerland

Many doctors need to involve specialists to solve more complex problems. Specialist and sub-specialist knowledge is increasing, which makes the cooperation between specialist disciplines ever more important. There are, however, some challenges:

First there is the challenge of limited resources. Specialists cannot always be there where they are needed. With doctors walking about 15 km per shift, physical mobility is also an issue. Telephone and computer communication is often interrupted – in most cases several callbacks are required. Smartphones seem interesting alternative.

With respect to improving their communication, doctors prioritize efforts that improve the efficiency of their communication: they don not want to go back to their computer as often as they do nowadays, as they lose a lot of time on the way. Also, they wish for an improved quality of their communication, like enriching messages by sharing photos, graphs and the like. Their focus on technology is to enable collaboration to facilitate learning and knowledge procedures, like involving colleagues in conferences and joint analysis of medical cases.

Three kinds of learning can be found in a clinical environment:

a) Learning through problem solving in the context of daily consultation in front of the patient: patient treatment and expert support. A doctor could record a case via his smartphone, for example by taking pictures of wounds which can then be share with experts to improve diagnosis and treatment.

b) Learning through discussion of and reflection on experiences involves colleagues in meetings or rapports, etc.

c) A third step could involve “bookmarks” of interesting cases to create online learning cases. In Pimmer’s study, cases are documented by a bookmarking function in a smartphone app, they can then be didactically prepared and be shared on local eLearning platforms. With this third step, the normal knowledge cycle of eLearning is reversed.

The reverse learning cycle allows for the integration of learning and work. Pimmer’s user-driven approach provides for multi-faceted research. The usability of his concept in other work areas is up for discussion.