The French language virtual medical university.

The work program of the French Language Virtual Medical University started about 2 years ago, and entered into a real active phase of development and implementation in 2002. Various national programs and organizational initiatives should accelerate and facilitate further appropriation of modem pedagogical approaches by knowledge providers and all users of the FSVMU, so as to advance on the way of virtual education. The French Language Virtual Medical University under the auspices of both the National Conference of Deans of Medical Schools and the International Conference of Deans of French-Speaking Medical Schools has been developed to create a major Internet portal for French-speaking distance medical learning and teaching. This construct should be representative of all medical schools in France and French-speaking countries. Contents will also be translated into English, Spanish and Arabic. All medical disciplines with their various levels of teaching are to be included. Cross-related fields are also going to be present in order to offer full range programs. The latter are intended to provide both initial and continuing education for medical students as well as all other categories of health professionals and medical and scientific research workers. To develop the appropriate technology and make such a portal, on one hand correspond to the specific educational requirements and proper training for health professionals, and on the other hand provide a general access to e-learning in all schools of medicine; in keeping with such goals, the following approaches should be stressed upon. To build a virtual space where individual patients, their families, patient associations as well as the general public, can obtain medical information of good quality for the purposes of both education and prevention. Providing such categories with reliable and validated sources of information, and offering an ethical basis for the increasing practice of e-medicine, represent in today's and tomorrow's world one of the great modern challenges for the medical community. Beyond the sole medical domain, the model offered by the FSVMU should be useful for the French-speaking Universities in all the fields of knowledge and training which are candidate to benefit from new educational means and methods.