The Latest Tools & Technologies
For nearly 10 years the National Board of Medical Examiners used the Harrell Center as a pilot site in developing new USMLE tests.
The College of Medicine remains at the forefront in the use of specialized educational methods required for effective training, including simulation, medical informatics, information management systems and standardized patients. From your first month of medical school, simulated environments and scenarios are created that enable you to gain experience and skills before you encounter real patients.
At UF’s Harrell Professional Development and Assessment Center, students gain formal practice and learn the importance of a team approach while interacting with standardized patients — actors trained to simulate symptoms and signs of specific ailments. This valuable tool has been used at UF for several years and is vital to teach and assess the attributes of professionalism, communication, interpersonal skills, patient safety and team-building.The widespread use and perfection of computerized virtual patient simulators can be traced back to UF physicians and engineers. In the early 1990s faculty from the department of anesthesiology, including our current dean, Dr. Michael L. Good, developed the Human Patient Simulator.
The UF Center for Simulation, Safety and Advanced Learning Technology provides the foundation for our college to advance health-care education and patient safety through the development, application and evaluation of new technologies. Immersive educational experiences, such as the virtual patient and standardized patient programs, are examples of how UF is using innovative health-care simulations to enhance knowledge, verify expertise and ultimately improve health outcomes.
The UF Office of Medical Informatics was founded in 1990 to study and apply the merging fields of communications science, computer science and health care. As the field of medical informatics has become increasingly complex, the college continues to respond to the diverse needs of health-care professionals, including educators, students, clinicians, librarians and computer scientists.
We are training people not just for next year, but for the next 20 and 30 years.
Patient safety is a primary concern.