Abstract
Creation of software for computer-based medical education (CBME) is a time-intensive, tedious task. Authoring tools of varying levels of sophistication have been developed in order to insulate the content author from programing responsibility, and to expedite the creation of teaching programs. To date, most of these authoring tools provide only primitive graphics capabilities and simple functions to manipulate hardware extensions such as a videodisc player.
Recent advances in microcomputer technology have encouraged us to design an authoring workstation which will provide a medical content specialist with the ability to: 1) access and manipulate high-resolution graphics images, 2) directly access videodisc images through keyword searching and 3) easily incorporate these images into interactive CBME programs.
This paper discusses the workstation's hardware and software capabilities and our development of a graphics image library for incorporation into a visual learning environment for undergraduate medical students.