Presented By: Megan Lim, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Co-Authors: Diamond Coleman, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Max Ledersnaider, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Noah Nigh, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Christopher Pecenka, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lisan Smith, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Purpose
Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CIMED) has developed a paradigm-shifting curriculum incorporating engineering, innovation, and early clinical experiences. Although this curriculum allows students to acquire a deeper understanding of the principles of medicine by applying their knowledge of biopsychosocial sciences to clinical scenarios, identifying a systematic approach to seamless integration of pharmacology across organ-system blocks at CIMED has remained a challenge. To address this challenge, a task force composed of students, staff, and faculty was created and developed an interactive web interface, named PRORENATA, aligned with the first three organ systems in the CIMED preclinical curriculum.
Methods
The site consists of concept maps for disease states as well as a hierarchical overview of all drug classes within an organ system block. PRORENATA utilizes HTML, Javascript, CSS code, and the computational chemistry package, RDKit, to support visualization. Expandable menus reveal the mechanism of action, adverse effects, chemical structures, and pertinent drug interactions of specific therapeutics. Metric analytics are embedded into the website to obtain anonymous individual user data such as time spent on the website, number of clicks, and content accessed.
Results
PRORENATA was launched to CIMED first-year medical students in August 2023. Analytics show there are currently 61 active users of PRORENATA, with an average engagement of 3 minutes per page.
Conclusion
Concept mapping allows students to formulate meaningful connections between key pharmacologic concepts.The student engagement from PRORENATA's initial launch demonstrates promise that this tool can be implemented longitudinally throughout the curriculum. Current endeavors include expanding our team of developers with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) to enhance the user interface, create a more robust network, and create formative assessments of students' competency.