Much of the fanfare surrounding the debut of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville has been about its vision of a whole health learning concept and the elaborate architectural designs of the 154,000-SF complex.
But the physician instructors and administrators are equally buoyed by the school’s insistence on using innovative technology as much as possible to facilitate learning. Two representatives spoke Tuesday at the NWA Tech Summit in Rogers about the school’s technology plans.
The medical school aims to use three-dimensional anatomy technology so students can understand the human body better than is now possible through the use of cadavers, which the school will not use.
“We can now visualize 3D anatomy using some of this technology, and the students can now have a more robust conversation with the instructors,” said Kevin Kunkler, assistant dean of simulation, innovation and clinical skills. “When I went through [medical school], we essentially used cadavers for dissection, and it is still a very good model. This type of technology allows you to look at it from a 3D perspective.”
Jason Degn, the school’s director of information technology, said the goal is to have all resources and information available to all students at all times. The school will use plastinated specimens — bodies preserved by plastics and thus reusable in a medical sense — rather than cadavers.
“Still, those require you to be in a specific place at a specific time to see this beautiful anatomic model,” Degn said. “How do we make all of these things accessible to our students? We don’t want them to have to come to a specific location at a particular time to see that plastinated specimen. We are using photo imagery techniques to create three-dimensional models of all of our plastinated specimens.
“The idea is a student can be sitting up at 2:30 in the morning reviewing gross anatomy, zooming in and out on their laptop device and they are able to have access to all of those resources wherever they may be.”
Anywhere Learning
Many industries learned during the pandemic the importance of remote access. Kunkler said virtual connections are going to be important for the medical school when it starts recruiting students for its first class in 2025.
Kunkler said for many prospective medical students, access to schools is geographically limited by costs. A student in California may not be able to interview at or tour a school in the Midwest or on the East Coast because travel and accommodations are unaffordable.
Degn said, nationally, there is a discrepancy of income in medical school classes. Students from the lower 60% of household income make up just one-fourth of medical students. Application interviews on Zoom or virtual tours can reduce the financial obstacles. That’s important because the school recently received candidate status for accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, so the recruitment of potential students is growing nearer.
“It does allow a higher diversity of students from across the nation to start considering different organizations for application,” Kunkler said. “This now gives so many students the opportunity, and we have seen an increase in the number of applicants across the nation.”
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