Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Medical education plays a vital role in a country’s education system. Therefore, it is essential that a medical student be provided with a state-of-art education. Engaging with a realistic learning environment ensures an effective study and practice of disease diagnostics for a medical student, thereby enhancing the medical education system. As the practice followed in the medical field, diseases are determined initially by diagnosing abnormal heart and lung sounds. Thus, practicing such diagnostics requires a large pool of patients representing each disease which needs to be learnt. However, providing such a large number of patients for a classroom learning session is impractical. Finding patients with each disease which needs to be learnt is another challenge. Simulation based medical education has currently emerged to practice diagnostics via heart and lung sounds. Either by using a dummy or a simulator patient, diseases are identified according to symptoms described by the performer or the doctor/lecturer. This leads to an unrealistic examination environment for the medical student. SimHaL (Hybrid Computer-based Simulator for Heart and Lung disease diagnosis to enhance medical Education) is a hybrid computer-based simulator with integrated human and computer components which simulates patient examination in a more realistic environment.