Open Education 2015

Despite the advent of open education and its adoption in many higher education fields, medicine has been slow to embrace these trends.

OPENPediatrics seeks to address the current, dramatic inequalities in pediatric medical knowledge and healthcare that exist across the globe. Despite the significant medical advances of the 21st century, there is a great geographic inequality to access in health services and trained personnel: over one billion people worldwide lack access to health services or trained health workers. Expertise on how to treat these children exists. Yet the teaching hospital apprenticeship model that once revolutionized medical education is now failing to keep pace with the dramatic increase in both medical knowledge and the increasing interconnected global population. As a result, expert knowledge is bottlenecked within institutions and only accessible to the few learners with the means and opportunities to come within the walls. Post-graduate medical education is further disrupted by work hour restrictions for trainees, which decrease opportunities for experiential learning.

OPENPediatrics provides a model for the future direction of medical education, by combining the latest innovative technologies and advancements in open education with virtual simulation, online gaming and adult learning theory to provide continuing medical education and connect the global pediatric healthcare community as never before.

OPENPediatrics has created an interactive virtual training and knowledge exchange platform to enhance the quality of pediatric critical care and revolutionize the existing post-graduate medical education model. Designed by experienced physicians at Boston Children's Hospital, in collaboration with technology partners, OPENPediatrics is changing the existing medical educational paradigm by offering asynchronous interactive learning and various avenues for knowledge sharing outside the walls of select institutions. Those accessing the website or the online platform will find free access to academically rigorous and peer-reviewed lectures, simulators, and protocols. Using these materials to encourage active learning and information exchange, this platform has already begun to create a global community of pediatric critical care practitioners.

OPENPediatrics also hosts a publicly accessible website, through which anyone can access a collection of openly licensed medical animations and illustrations created for our educational videos. The resources can be downloaded and reused for various educational purposes. The program is also working to develop a patient and parent portal, which will provide educational material designed specifically for patients and families around home care for pediatric patients.

OPENPediatrics is leading the way in promoting the open sharing of knowledge in the medical field, a step that can lead to the improvement of care worldwide.