Education Technology Center Unites Teaching, Learning and Practice

At Mayo Clinic, learning isn't confined to students. To offer the best patient care, all Mayo physicians need to stay on top of advances in medicine. But, with hundreds of journal articles, abstracts, reports and medical news releases published every day, keeping up with new information is a challenge. That's where Mayo's Education Technology Center comes in.

The Education Technology Center develops learning technologies to support Mayo Clinic's five schools and to help Mayo physicians incorporate new medical information into their work.

"Mayo Clinic is built around the concept that no individual has all knowledge," says Farrell Lloyd, M.D., a General Internal Medicine physician and director of the Education Technology Center. "The Education Technology Center is based on a collaborative approach to support Mayo as a professional learning organization."

In that spirit of collaboration, the center gathers knowledge from physicians and researchers and disseminates it throughout the organization.

For example, the center has developed a way for physicians who have patients with certain conditions, such as long QT syndrome (a dangerous heart disorder), to have online access to current information about the condition, best practices for diagnosing and treating it, and contact details about Mayo experts on the condition. The information can be customized, depending on each physician's practice area.

This project involved developing an application called MayoExpert, using the center's Enterprise Learning System, a computer-based tool that allows the Education Technology Center to connect staff to up-to-date learning resources.

Using the Enterprise Learning System, the center is also creating electronic curriculum for several Mayo education programs. The curriculum will allow students to study information related to their clinical work online, while allowing faculty to track students' progress.

"One of the biggest benefits of the Education Technology Center is that it unifies our teaching," says Dr. Lloyd. "We know that everyone who uses these technologies is learning the same material developed with input from Mayo experts. It helps ensure that we are teaching what we practice and practicing what we teach. Ultimately, that kind of cohesive approach benefits patients."