title: The epilepsy tutorial.
abstract: Within the European Neurological Network (ENN) project an interactive multimedia tutorial covering the medical field of epilepsy has been created. The first priorities of that project to educate health care professionals, e.g. General Practitioners (GP), throughout the European community as how to best diagnose and treat patients (e.g. reduction of frequent consultations, avoiding of excessive and unnecessary medication and useless laboratory tests) and to inform patients and carers are reached by producing a distributable CD-ROM. Later frequent updates of the content of the installed tutorial will take place by a telematic network contacting the multimedia database of the ENN-project. Using the toolbook author-system with integrated sound, images, animation and videos the data collected from about 10 experts are arranged as an electronic book, with multiple-linked pages and an object oriented program design, based for instance on customisable navigation buttons, special text arrangement, graphics, and staging areas for content and interaction display. The multimedia tutorial about epilepsy contains case reports, specific multiple choice questions with scoring, video clips etc. and several possibilities for access such as help-pages available all times, index, search machine for phrases, bookmark settings and roadmaps for graphical orientation. Detailed text is prepared including physiology and pathophysiology, differential diagnosis, investigations, therapeutics, epilepsy in children, advice for patients and carers, and is supported by a glossary, special definitions and proposals for classification of the different kinds of epilepsy. The tutorial runs with Windows 3.1, 95 and NT and contains 1300 pages text with 382 Fig.s, 14 videos, 70 sound files, 196 definitions and 8 roadmaps. The epilepsy tutorial has been distributed in March/May 1998 to more than 100 general physicians in Germany, Portugal and France.
authors.affiliation: King's College Hospital, London, England.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Binnie
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spreng
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016251:CD-ROM; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000379:methods*; D004502:Education, Medical, Continuing / Q000379:methods*; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy; D005194:Family Practice / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019212:Multimedia; D012984:Software