INTEGRATING SURGICAL TRAINING VIDEO SIMULATION INTO THE VIRTUAL ORTHOPAEDIC UNIVERSITY

Objectives: A digital library, together with its users and its contents don’t exist in isolated splendour. The Virtual Orthopaedic European University [1], developed by a consortium drawn from six European countries, is dedicated to the ongoing professional education of Orthopaedic Surgeons across the European Community. VOEU supports experienced surgeons learning about and disseminating material upon surgical techniques in Orthopaedics, especially Image Guided Orthopaedic Surgery. The objective is to integrate the surgical operative video into multimedia based educational packages so that the embedded video is linked automatically to the relevant supporting material. These activities are intrinsically coupled as a part of the requirements of Continuing Professional Development. Method: Within VOEU, the multimedia modules are designed using Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) to ensure compliance with international standards in computer assisted learning [2], whilst facilitating the integration of learning objects generated by individuals that are peer reviewed and collated to provide content for the orthopaedic syllabus. This requires inclusion of video from operations and to integrate this in such