To examine how medical concepts are covered across multiple years of medical education, we developed the Curriculum Knowledge Management Platform (C-MAP). C-MAP combines medical indexing of streaming lecture video, PowerPoint presentation, and course objectives with a knowledge management model to assess curriculum scope and integration.
Challenge
The unintended consequences of curriculum digitation, video archiving, and online course management include the challenges of information overload, media that is not searchable, and the mass accumulation of unscalable information in the guise of knowledge.
In response to these issues, we developed a system in 2003 to annotate manually our digitized library of medical school lecture videos. It became apparent that the task of building a multimedia database of searchable keywords was a monumental undertaking. Our initial experience highighted the necessity to devise special applications and interfaces to convert data into information as usable medical knowledge.
Solutions
The Curriculum Knowledge Management Platform (C-MAP), an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) based knowledge management system, compares concepts covered in the medical school curriculum against the MeSH / UMLS database of relevant and related concepts. MeSH is the National Library of Medicine's controlled lexicon, consisting of a hierarchical tree structure.
C-MAP's components allow for the conversion of raw digital content into curricular assets. The steps involved in data transformation and mark-up result in an aggregation of curriculum metadata, keywords, MeSH concepts, and real-time events.
Three main functions:
- Abstract and index key concepts
- Link explanations automatically to video timelines
- Inventory the curriculum
Benefits
Interface design
An intuitive and easily navigable interface, based on Search by Lectureand Search byCourse features
High-level sensitivity and specificity
Networks every concept covered in the curriculum and uses the relative sum to define the scope of a lecture
Accounts for the MeSH ontology limitations of clinical terminology
Particularly in relation to the Third and Fourth Year curriculum, we have enlisted faculty to review the CMap-generated key words list to identify omissions, inaccuracies, or extraneous terms
Automated medical indexing and multimedia tagging system
Enables users to browse the curriculum from as low as the atomic or keyword level, and extending upward to the aerial or discipline level
Controlled lexicon
Pairs the MeSH / UMLS ontology and lexicon to detect and network the majority of concepts in the basic biomedical sciences