What is OpenMed?
OpenMed is a collection of links to high quality and freely available medical education resources.í We have tried our best to associate useful information with each resource to let you know if it is suitable for your needs, and what type of resource it is.
Resources can be found by browsing the curricula that outlines where a resource may be suitable within a specialist area of medical education. They can also be searched for using key terms.í To help you narrow your search down you can filter search results down by the curricula categories.
Who is it for?
It should be useful to students of medicine and all healthcare professions, and the upper-level resources should be good CPD/ CME.í Teachers and some others will find it useful to search for resources beyond those listed on the Curriculum pages, which only list a selected set of those that we have reviewed.
How we choose resources
The list you see on the curriculum pages is selected from a (much) larger number of items that we have reviewed to populate a notional curriculum for each specialty.í This is a subjective exercise.í We have some general principles in selecting resources:
- Openly available, or (sometimes) with a free, simple and open registration process
- Not associated with advertising, unless that is limited and carefully controlled
- Sensible, impartial, reliable, reviewed for quality; ideally with date it was last reviewed or updated
- We lean toward bandwidth-lite resources
- We lean away from lectures*
- We try not link to non-browser files.í So no PowerPoint presentations, very rare .doc, and only occasional pdf files if not too large, and with apologies, if they are the best thing there is on a topic.
*We select few online lectures, unless exceptional.í í They tend to be difficult to skim through, or go back to for revision.í With audio they often become high bandwidth.í Many require Flash.
Star ratings
These are again subjective, and refer to how useful we think the resources are for learning from, bearing in mind the audience we’ve identified it for, and our selection criteria in the bullet pointsí above.í If OpenMed is successful, we may open the door to ‘crowdsourcing’ ratings.í However the range of potential users could make these difficult to interpret (“Is that rating from beginners or experts?”).í For now – post feedback or send us comments on what we’ve said.
Browsing the Curricula
If you are not looking for any resource in particular, but you are keen to see what resources are available for an area of medical teaching then you can browse through the curricula pages.í These pages provide concise information about specialties and some key sub-topics in the area.
We have highlighted resources that are particularly useful in each of the areas.í These can be found in the blue box below the category description. To narrow your search down you can filter search results by the curricula categories.
Each Resource displayed has information to give you an idea of how useful the resource may be for you.í You can click on the resource area to view a brief description of the resource.
- Resource Name (Click to view more information about the resource)
- Link Icon (Click to link directly to resource)
- Brief description of the resource
- This is displayed when you expand the resource box, this can be done by clicking the yellow area when your mouse is hovered over the resource information
- Star Rating í¢’¬’ as judged by OpenMed
- Target Level í¢’¬’ Who will find this resource useful [link to more info on target levels]
Searching for a Resource
If you are looking to find resources that cover a specific topic or area then it may be easier to simply search for a resource.
You can search for resources by typing keywords into the search bar and hitting enter. This will then return a list of any resources that match your search, and highlight the keyword where it appears within the resource information.
If you need to filter the resources more, there is also the possibility by forcing the search to only look for resources within a certain category.
The search results also provide you details on the resource, and the ability to link directly to the resource itself.
Quick Filter
It is also possible to do a quick search from any page by using the “Quick Filter” tool that can be found in the right hand bar of every page.í This allows you to find a resource in a specific category, and further filter by the type of resource using some of the available metadata tags.
Explaining the Resources
When looking for resources it is important that you can find the resource that you need as quickly and simply as possible. We have tried to provide us much information as possible to you without making the process too complicated.
Below you can see what information is available, and how you can use it to see if the resource is going to be suitable for your needs.
- Resource Name (Click to view more information about the resource)
- Link Icon (Click to link directly to resource)
- Brief description of the resource
- This is displayed when you expand the resource box, this can be done by clicking the yellow area when your mouse is hovered over the resource information
- Star Rating í¢’¬’ as judged by OpenMed
- Target Level í¢’¬’ Who will find this resource useful [link to more info on target levels]
If you would like to see all of the information relating to a resource then you can click the Resource Name to take you to the resource page to get more details about the materials available.
What is metadata?
Metadata is used by OpenMed to try and associate more information to a resource to make it clearer to you what type of resource you are looking at.
Star Ratings
To give you an idea of the quality of a resource the OpenMed team have given a star rating to the resource to give you a quick clue as to how useful we think the resource is. view more information about the resource)
5 Blue Stars means that the resource is fantastic, whereas 1 or 2 Blue Stars would mean that the resource might be difficult to use, or that the content is not up-to-date for example.
Target levels
Medical Education has a range of levels that resources may be aimed at.í Often one resource might have areas that are suitable for a Medical Student, as well as a Consultant.í To make it easy to identify and filter by target level we have created a “Target Level” system. Narrow your search down by filtering by the curricula categories.
If a resource is suitable for a specific level then we have tagged it as either Level A, Level B, Level C, or Level C plus.
Resource Types
Resources come in many varieties, and the different types of resources may be best suited to your way of learning or teaching. We have been assigning metadata to resources to help to make it clear what type of resource you are looking at.
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