Information technology in medical education: Current and future applications

Abstract

Information technology has the potential to revolutionise the way medicine is learned by students and healthcare professionals. This potential was recognised by the General Medical Council in their 1993 report Tomorrow's doctors in which the need for future generations of doctors to be familiar with the application and scope of information technology is described. This paper focuses on the use of computers as aids to learning medicine and discusses two key applications of information technology to medical education: multimedia and the internet. The current use and potential for these areas of information technology are described and future developments discussed.