Multimedia clinical examination: the time honoured art and science mirrored digitally

In the recent years, multimedia has exhibited a tremendous presence in the personal computer market and it has exerted an influence in our homes and teaching institutions as well. To define it very simply, a multimedia PC is a personal computer capable of producing images and sound of reasonable quality by means of software toggles. This paper presents an Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook application entitled Multimedia Clinical Examination (MCE) which harnesses the ability of affordable computers to create and display a variety of audiovisual media to supplement ‘bed-side teaching’ of elementary clinical methods which includes history taking and physical examination. MCE comprises a history taking module which helps in keeping track of the possible differential diagnoses and a physical examination module which shows digital videos of appropriate examination steps. The application runs on the Microsoft Windows platform.