Technologies for Interprofessional Education: The Interprofessional Education-distributed "e-Classroom-of-the-Future"

Communications strategies are central to the planning and execution of interprofessional education (IPE) programs. The diversity of telecommunications-based tools and platforms available for IPE is rapidly expanding. Each tool and platform has a potentially important role to play. The selection, testing, and embedding of tools, such as social networking platforms, within education programs can be very challenging. The goal was to create, in Phoenix, a "command-and-control" video conferencing center (the "T-Health Amphitheater" or "Telehealth Amphitheater") in which tele-consultation patients, located physically at one of the affiliated tele-clinics around the state, could be presented electronically to interprofessional teams of faculty members from the University of Arizona Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health, as well as those from the allied health colleges of other universities in Arizona, for interprofessional team training in a virtual classroom setting. The T-Health video conferencing facility was designed and built. Early assessments show that its novel learning environment is student- and faculty-friendly. T-Health Amphitheater's pair of innovative visible social networking platforms (eStacks^™ and eSwaps^™) may help break down some of the traditional communications barriers encountered in healthcare IPE and medical practices.