ORIGINAL ARTICLE Learning medicine through collaboration and action: collaborative, experiential, networked learning environments Parvati Dev Æ Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs Received: 8 September 2008 / Accepted: 9 September 2008 / Published online: 28 October 2008 Ó Springer-Verlag London Limited 2008 Abstract The SUMMIT Lab and William LeRoy Hein- richs, at Stanford University, were honored to be the 2002 awardees of the Satava Award for Virtual Reality in Medicine. Since the award, the group has followed two main threads of research, which we describe below. The first, ‘‘building a high-performance, network-aware, col- laborative learning environment’’ has investigated the framework and components needed when students in multiple locations collaborate using computation-intensive simulations and large image datasets. The second thread, ‘‘online, interactive human physiology for medical educa- tion and training’’, has focused on the application of interactive physiology models embedded in 3D visualiza- tions of virtual patients in naturalistic medical environments. These environments support immersive, experiential learning where students act as medical pro- viders and manage authentic medical events and crises. These research efforts, and our conclusions, are presented in the chapter below. Keywords Collaborative learning  Human anatomy  Human physiology  Online  Distance learning  Virtual patients  Virtual physiology models  Virtual worlds  Stereo anatomy 1 Building a high-performance, network aware, collaborative learning environment 1.1 Introduction The HAVnet project (Haptic, Audio, Visual Network for Education), funded by the National Library of Medicine, supported our research and development of a framework for an advanced network infrastructure for health education and medical research. We have shown (Fig. 1) that such a network infrastructure requires a Middleware system that monitors and reports network conditions to network-aware Applications that can self-scale and self-optimize based on network ‘‘weather reports.’’ The core system and applica- tions have been developed within the context of two medical testbeds, a clinical anatomy testbed and a clinical skills testbed. Each testbed focuses on applications that challenge networks in unique ways. Beginning with local testbeds, we have extended our testbeds to national and international scope, and have evaluated them for educa- tional, technical and enterprise impact. In this section of the chapter, we provide insight into the new directions that will be required for networked access, through powerful interfaces, to complex anatomy and clinical data support- ing medical research and education. A complete report is available at http://havnet.stanford.edu/resources/ report.html with a summary report at http://havnet.stanford. edu/. 1.2 Infrastructure Development of a networked, collaborative environment depends on the availability of a robust, high performance computing and communication infrastructure, such as the following: P. Dev (&)  Wm. L. Heinrichs Innovation in Learning, Inc, Los Altos Hills, CA, USA e-mail: parvati@parvatidev.org Wm. L. Heinrichs SUMMIT and Department of Obstetrics/Gynaecology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA 123 Virtual Reality (2008) 12:215–234 DOI 10.1007/s10055-008-0099-5