UAB medical geneticist Bruce R. Korf, M.D., Ph.D., has produced six teaching videos focused on the latest in genetics for clinicians caring for critically ill children in all settings worldwide. The talks are posted on OPENPediatrics, an interactive digital learning platform that provides continuing medical education and promotes knowledge sharing among a global community of clinicians. 

The videos are:

• "Mendelian Inheritance”
• “Genetic Risk Assessment"
• “Using Standard Pedigree Symbols”
• “Multifactorial Inheritance”
• “Pedigree Analysis”
• "Non-Mendelian Inheritance Patterns”

“OPENPediatrics is an innovative way of producing rich media content that can educate clinicians around the world,” Korf said. “It is clear that genetics and genomics will play an increasingly important role in medical decision-making; but most clinicians were never educated about the principles, or their training took place a long time ago, predating most present-day genomics approaches. I saw this as an opportunity to provide some foundational information that would serve as a steppingstone toward helping clinicians use genetics and genomics in their day-to-day practice.”

OPENPediatrics is sponsored by Boston Children’s Hospital in collaboration with the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies. Korf is the Wayne H. and Sara Crews Finley Chair in Medical Genetics at UAB, professor and chair of theDepartment of Genetics, and director of the Heflin Center for Genomic Sciences.

Julie Ecker, intellectual property specialist for OPENPediatrics, says the content on OPENPediatrics includes internationally recognized clinician experts teaching the full range of topics on the care of critically ill children, device simulators, medical calculators and social collaboration tools. All content is peer-reviewed and open-access, and thus is available at no expense to the user. For further information or to register for a free account, visit www.openpediatrics.org.

“In collaborating with OPENPediatrics,” Ecker said, “Dr. Korf is helping to provide free education to health care professionals around the world by sharing his research and knowledge, which will in turn help to create a global community of best practices that will improve the care of sick children worldwide.”