Using clinical guidelines in an eLearning context

Abstract

Clinical guidelines have been widely used to standardise medical practices according to scientific evidence, aiming at improving quality and reducing risks. In this paper we discuss how clinical guidelines are also extremely useful in an eLearning context. The information contained in the guideline, its decision workflow and its execution with real patients can be the basis for both formal and informal learning processes involving medical students, medical professionals or patients. We present different learning scenarios based on the use of clinical guidelines. We also describe the main elements of our guideline execution engine which is currently under development.