Clinical skill-building simulations in cardiology: HeartLab and EkgLab.

HeartLab and EkgLab are two simulation-based programs designed to teach medical students the essentials of the auscultatory cardiac examination and of electrocardiogram interpretation, respectively. The issues considered throughout the development of these projects, namely implementation language selection, program architecture, simulation design, patient models, and the approach to verification, are applicable to the design of any simulation-based system.