STM publisher Elsevier was recently awarded the inaugural Progressive Medical Education Software Award by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The award was presented to the locally-developed Elsevier Animal Simulator software, which recreates a virtual animal laboratory for students to learn without having to maim or kill animals for dissection.
PETA is the largest animal rights organisation in the world that recognises individuals or organisations dedicated to animal welfare through their efforts to save and protect animals from cruelty.
Conceptualised and developed in India, the Elsevier Animal Simulator addresses local education regulations that call for replacing the use of animals in teaching with modern, non-animal teaching methods covering over 25 types of experiments in pharmacology and physiology. Almost 20 percent of medical colleges in India have adopted the Elsevier Animal Simulator, including AIIMS-Bhopal, AIIMS-Rishikesh, AIIMS-Jodhpur, M.S. Ramaiah Medical College, Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College and Calcutta Medical College.
The computer-assisted learning tool uses interactive media content to help undergraduate and postgraduate medical students understand experimental skills and how animals respond to various chemicals and stimuli. It is available to medical and pharmacy colleges worldwide, and is currently used in colleges such as IBN Sina National College for Medical Sciences in Saudi Arabia, Durham University in the UK and Maryland University in the US.
Brought to you by Scope e-Knowledge Center, a world-leading provider of metadata services, abstraction, indexing, entity extraction and knowledge organisation models (Taxonomies, Thesauri and Ontologies).
