TIME-ITEM is an

ontology Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...

of ''Topics'' that describes the content of undergraduate

medical education Medical education is vocational education, education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, including the initial training to become a physician (i.e., medical school and internship (medical), internship) and additional trainin ...

. TIME is an acronym for "Topics for Indexing Medical Education"; ITEM is an acronym for "Index de thèmes pour l’éducation médicale." Version 1.0 of the taxonomy has been released and the

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

that allows users to work with it is still under development. Its developers are seeking more collaborators to expand and validate the taxonomy and to guide future development of the web application.

History

The development of TIME-ITEM began at the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a Official bilingualism in Canada, bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ot ...

in 2006. It was initially developed to act as a content

index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...

for a curriculum map being constructed there. After its initial presentation at the 2006 conference of the Canadian Association for Medical Education, early collaborators included the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood, Ontario, Ainslie Wood and Westdale, Ontario, Westd ...

and Queen's University.

Features

The TIME-ITEM ontology is unique in that it is designed specifically for undergraduate medical education. As such, it includes fewer strictly biomedical entries than other common medical vocabularies (such as

MeSH Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus of index terms that facilitates searching. Created and updated by th ...

SNOMED CT SNOMED CT or SNOMED Clinical Terms is a systematically organized computer-processable collection of medical terms providing codes, terms, synonyms and definitions used in clinical documentation and reporting. SNOMED CT is considered to be the mo ...

) but more entries relating to the medico-social concepts of communication, collaboration, professionalism, etc. Topics within TIME-ITEM are arranged poly-

hierarchically A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

, meaning any Topic can have more than one

parent A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in humans, it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian, generally called an adoptive parent or step-parent. Parents who are progenitors are First-degree relative, first-degree relatives and have ...

. Relationships are established based on the logic that learning about a Topic contributes to the learning of all its parent Topics. In addition to housing the ontology of Topics, the TIME-ITEM web application can house multiple Outcome frameworks. All Outcomes, whether private Outcomes entered by single institutions or publicly available medical education Outcomes (such as CanMeds 2005) are hierarchically linked to one or more Topics in the ontology. In this way, the contribution of each Topic to multiple Outcomes is made explicit.Willett TG, Marshall KC, Broudo M & Clarke M. TIME as a generic index for outcome-based medical education. ''Medical Teacher'' 2008; 29(7):655-9. The structure of the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

documents exported from TIME-ITEM (which contain the hierarchy of Outcomes and TIME-ITEM Topics) is being developed alongside the MedBiquitous Competency standards. The taxonomy currently exists in English only but translation to Canadian French is in progress.

Applications

TIME-ITEM is intended to be a general-use ontology for medical education informatics. Potentially, it has two primary applications: # Inclusion in curriculum maps. By mapping learning objects or sessions to TIME-ITEM Topics in a curriculum map, the map becomes searchable for both granular and broad concepts. If one or more Outcome frameworks are included with the Topic ontology, then the contribution of each curricular element to one or more Outcomes is made explicit. This also facilitates curriculum

evaluation In common usage, evaluation is a systematic determination and assessment of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of Standardization, standards. It can assist an organization, program, design, project or any o ...

in terms of one or more outcome frameworks. # Indexing learning, assessment and portfolio objects. Metatagging

learning object A learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hodgins, and dates from a working group in 1994 bearing the name. The c ...

s or assessment objects with a controlled vocabulary enhances the organization and retrieval of objects from a

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

. Metatagging

electronic portfolio An electronic portfolio (also known as a digital portfolio, online portfolio, e-portfolio, e-folio, or eFolio) is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually but not only on the Web (online portfolio). Such elect ...

entries allows one to show how multiple entries "add up" to a demonstration of competence with respect to certain educational outcomes. The possibility of expanding or modifying TIME-ITEM for use in postgraduate/continuing medical education and in nursing education is currently being explored.

References

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External links

* http://www.time-item.org (Registration required, by application only) Library cataloging and classification Medical classification Ontology (information science) Medical education

History

Features

Applications

See also

References

External links