In order to achieve its goal of enabling the sharing of virtual patients (VPs) across medical education centres, the eViP programme faced a number of technical challenges which had to be overcome. To this end, in the early stages of the prgramme it was determined that a Technical Reference Group (TRG) be established.
The key goals of the TRG were:
- Define an application profile to describe the contents of transport packages for the sharing of VPs amongst partner VP Players (systems that ‘play’ the VP);
- Specify different levels of conformance with the application profile that may be attained, and explicitly define the criteria that must be met to reach each conformance level;
- Co-ordinate the efforts of the partner VP players in developing import and export functionality within each system;
- Formulate a set of best practice guidelines for the exchange and reuse of VP content; and
- Provide assistance for any further technical issues encountered by the eViP project team.
These initial goals have now been achieved, and the TRG will continue to act in an advisory role in the future.
So what now? Having concluded the work on the contruction of the specification for the eViP application profile and its associate conformace metrics, the role of the TRG in future is to ensure that each of the partner systems can produce export packages for use in the repurposing effort, and to provide technical advice and assistance to the rest of the eViP team.
Additionally, the TRG will advise other aprties from outside the eViP team and partner institutions who may be interested in using or authoring VP packages that conform to the eViP Application Profile.
If you are interested in conforming to the eViP Application Profile, or for more information regarding the TRG please contact Luke Woodham at [email protected]
