MedSchoolInABox

Globally-available, free, co-accredited online knowledge transfer with local support, offering a
competency-based, North American-style medical school.

Summary
NextGenU.org, Stanford Medicine, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, and University of
Central Florida College of Medicine have collected and are making freely available a complete
set of resources that collectively fulfill the undergraduate medical education competencies for
the U.S. medical school accrediting body, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, and
fulfill the medical school curricula of our three university partners. We are keen to work with
partners to collaboratively take this framework and resources and transform them into full
M.D./D.O. degrees, and we are also able to offer an integrated Master’s Degree in Public
Health, along with the M.D./D.O. degrees.

Using a Moodle.org-based Learning Management System, medical schools’ knowledge transfer

and administrative needs are addressed. There are three especially useful audiences for these
curricula:
· universities or Ministries of Education or Health that would like to establish a new medical
school, using our collected materials, and local mentoring, peer, and patient interactions;
· existing medical schools that do not have some of our core or our unusual offerings, or are
trying to comply with the ECFMG 2023 or other U.S.-based requirements;
· current medical students wanting to supplement or replace their didactic trainings in core
courses, or to take one of our unusual courses (as if they did a rotation or semester abroad).

We have tested and published on this free model in North American medical, public health, and
undergraduate students, and in community health workers and primary care physicians in
Kenya and in India, with as much knowledge gain and greater student satisfaction than with
traditional courses, and the creation of a community of practice that has learned to interact
globally and productively. This creates the ready possibility of immediately, sustainably, and
globally-permanently transforming health sciences education, and ongoingly supplying millions
of physicians, public health professionals, and other health workers.
General Methods
A list of courses that should be included in a four-year medical curriculum was developed, and
divided into “Pre-clinical courses - 1st and 2nd year” and “Clinical courses - 3rd and 4th
year”. The list was developed by compiling and cross-tabulating all courses from the medical
curricula of Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine,
and University of Central Florida College of Medicine, and incorporating the guidance of the
Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s Standards 6 and 7 for creating a medical school
curriculum, and AAMC’s Core Entrustables. Resources were identified and confirmed, including
only (for reliability and validity) resources from universities, medical specialty societies, peer-
reviewed journals, or governments.

List of First and Second Year Courses Addressed (Pre-Clinical)

Anatomy and Physiology
Applied Biochemistry
Cells to Tissue
Dermatology
Endocrinology
Ethics and Medicolegal
Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Genetics
Hematology
Immunology
Intro to Cancer Biology and Oncology
Kidney and Urinary Tract
Pharmacology
Reproduction
Research and Health
Respiratory System
Cardiovascular System
Nervous System

Third and Fourth Year Courses (Clinical)

Critical Care and Anesthesiology
Family Medicine
Geriatrics
Internal Medicine
Nephrology
Neurology
OB/GYN
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology
Pediatrics
Psychiatry
Surgery

In addition, we will be able by late 2018 to offer the pre-health sciences curriculum, the 2 years
of basic health sciences (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics) prior to the 4 year curriculum
described above.
Truncated Criteria Given to Course Creators for Resource Collection
· Sources must have no commercial advertising and be free, and resources should be
recent (since 2000, ideally since 2006, depending on the topic).
· Each sub-topic should ideally have >=2 options, but all must have at least one plain text
resource to fulfill the competency for those who prefer this medium, and/or have low
band-width. In addition to always also providing a plain text option, we endeavor to give
rich and mixed media as additional or alternative resources (i.e., video lectures by world-
class speakers, interactive modules, atlases, journal articles etc.). Powerpoint slides are
acceptable only if they have lecture notes.
· It’s not all about finding computer-based resources. Many competencies are best
addressed by reading about and then practicing a skill, by oneself, with a peer or mentor
(either locally or at a distance), and all trainings need to have considerable mentor- and
peer-guided experiences, especially for clinical training. For example, for our cardiology
training, a requirement could be: "Using the techniques in the reference you just read,
and the audio guide to heart sounds at this link, use a stethoscope to listen to heart
sounds for >=1 hour. First listen to your own heart for 10 minutes, then listen for a few
minutes to a couple friends’ hearts, and then listen to 30 patients’ hearts (for >=1 minute
each). Check what you're hearing against the audio guide. If you find unusual sounds,
have your mentor listen, too."