MedBiquitous

See http://www.medbiq.org/,

MedBiquitous creates technology standards to advance healthcare education and competence assessment. Our standards make it easy to exchange educational content and track learner activities and profiles.

and in particular, the MedBiq Competencies Working Group

The mission of the MedBiquitous Competencies Working Group is to develop XML standards and supporting guidelines for competency data enabling educational resources and activities to be tied to a competency framework.

Introduction

MedBiq's information model is based on the distinction between what they call the "Competency Object", which is

... any abstract statement of learning or performance expectations, and information related to the statement. Statements can be learning outcomes, competencies per se, learning objectives, professional roles, topics, classifications/collections, etc.

and what they call the "Competency Framework", which is

an organized and structured representation of a set of interrelated and purposeful competency objects.

This is the same distinction that runs through much recent work, and is reflected in InLOC thinking.

The Competency Object is kept as lean as possible, so that it can be reused in any applicable different Frameworks.

The specs partly rely on MedBiq's version of LOM, called Healthcare LOM (standardised through ANSI).

General information

(see Example source guidance)

Competency information in general is seen as enabling the following:

• Learners and educators able to search for learning resources addressing a particular competency
• Educators able to determine where specific competencies are addressed in a curriculum
• Boards and hospitals able to track and manage competency data for the professional
• Administrators are able to map one competency framework to another.

Features for Object spec

Based on the version of 2010-09-14 (current as of 2012-03-19)

The CompetencyObject element has 5 constituent elements:

• lom:lom
  includes identifier, title, description, publisher, all defined in Healthcare LOM
• Category
  similarly to Atom, this has term, scheme and label
• References
  for references to the literature
• SupportingInformation
  "such as formatted or lengthy descriptions of the competency object"
• XtensibleInfo
  as with most extension points, this is left for use by any implementing organisation

One reason for SupportingInformation is that LOM allows only plain text descriptions. SupportingInformation can either be a URL link, or an xhtml div element similarly to xhtml content in Atom.

Features for Framework spec

Based on the version of 2011-12-14 (current as of 2012-03-19)

The CompetencyFramework IM currently contains the following elements:

• lom:lom
  similarly to Competency Object, but the nature of a Framework is distinct from the nature of a Competency Object, even if the Framework in effect serves to detail one particular Object
• EffectiveDate
• RetiredDate
• Replaces
• IsReplacedBy
  these four useful self-explanatory elements are not present in LOM, so are given separately
• SupportingInformation
  for formatted information about the Framework, potentially including links, etc.
• Includes
  here are given the CompetencyObjects included in this Framework
• Relation
  here are specified the relations between the included Objects
• other

Any other or longer information

Guidelines requirements

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InLOC consultation with MedBiquitous is through Simon Grant.

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