The course has the aim of providing educators coming from health sciences faculties with the basic know-how needed to introduce Informatics into the undergraduate curricula of medicine, nursing, dentistry, etc. The typical participant is a healthcare professional, such as a physician, who has a good background as a computer user, and who is interested into teaching Medical Informatics as a undergraduate or continuing education discipline at his or her institution.
Brazil has more than 80 medical schools, 100 dentistry schools, and 70 nursing schools. The majority of these schools do not offer courses on the subject (for example, only 7 or 8 medical schools have introduced Informatics into the undergraduate curriculum). However, most of the schools have at least one faculty member who is enthusiastic about computers and uses them as a power user. They usually desire to teach the subject but have no information and/or adequate teaching materials to start it.
The Summer Course provides precisely this information. During two full weeks, the participants attend to practical classes in a microcomputer lab, and discussion seminars on the contents, strategies and tactical details necessary to "learn how to teach". The classes and seminars are oriented by highly experienced members of the UNICAMP Medical School faculty, who are responsible for teaching the subject at undergraduate, graduate and continuing education levels since 1983. The participants receive a full complement of high-quality and tested instructional materials, developed by Prof. Sabbatini, such as a handbook on medical applications of computers, a laboratory manual for teaching microcomputer fundamentals, a set of slides, and a suite of 25 medical software applications for IBM-PCs; besides extensive reference literature.
The subjects discussed during the course include the teaching of computer literacy (DOS, word processing, spreadsheet and statistical packages, database managers, software for bibliographic search management, etc.); as well as the teaching of specific medical applications, such as medical records and automatic history taking, signal and image processing, hospital and medical office automation, applications in public health, epidemiology, medical education and research, etc. The participants learn how to use the application packages developed by UNICAMP especially for this purpose. The participants learn also how to plan and implement Medical Informatics curricula.
The 1991 and 1992 installments of the Summer Course were highly successful. Altogether 21 educators from several medical, nursing and dentistry schools paticipated. As a consequence, six months later, 80 % of them had already started Medical Informatics courses at their institutions. Furthermore, they are in permanent contact with the UNICAMP group, which continues to provide them with advice, information and follow-up. Five participants, encouraged by the course results, enrolled as graduate students at the Medical Informatics graduate course offered by UNICAMP, towards a Master's degree.
The Summer Course will be reapeated next January 1993. In the next installment, we intend to offer places to participants from the Latin American region, as well. Please contact the Editor to receive further information.
First Brazilian Forum on Science and Technology in Health
The joint scientific meeting of the Brazilian Societies of Biomedical Engineering, Physics in Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, Radioprotection and (extra-officially), Clinical Engineering and Health Informatics; will be held in Caxambu, Brazil, in November 1992. Full papers in Portuguese, Spanish or English will be accepted until July 15, in the following areas: biomedical instruments, signal and image processing, sensors and transductors, biomedical informatics and clinical software, rehabilitation engineering, clinical engineering, biomaterials and biomechanics, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, diagnostic imaging, dosimetry and radioprotection, evaluation of technology in healthcare, education and training. A technical exhibit will show the latest developments in biomedical instrumentation, biomaterials, software and services related to health technology.
Ca. 700 participants and 100 papers are expected.
Information and author kits available from: Sergio S. Muhlen, CEB/UNICAMP, PO Box 6040, 13081 Campinas, SP. SMUHLEN@DEB.FEE.UNICAMP.BR
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