Ebrain brings the e-learning revolution to the neurosciences

Abstract

Over 450 authors from every clinical neuroscience specialty were needed to come up with the more than 550 lessons that make up the 23module ebrain curriculum—the world’s largest, most comprehensive web-based training resource in clinical neuroscience. At ebrain’s launch at the end of 2011, John Pickard, Chairman of the UK’s Joint Neurosciences Council (JNC), described it as “the key to taking neurosciences forward in this country”, a resource that could transform the way in which both clinical trainees and trainers are supported throughout their continuous professional development. But had it not been for the perseverance of the project’s small team of clinical and technical leads, ebrain might never have seen the light of day after cuts to the UK Department of Health’s e-learning budget plunged the programme into crisis. The concept of ebrain was originally commissioned under the aegis of the Department of Health’s e-Learning for Healthcare programme, which approached the JNC to collaborate on the project. The idea of e-Learning for Healthcare was to create an e-learning programme that would cover all aspects of medicine—an ambitious undertaking funded from the department’s capital budget and one with a large attendant bureaucratic machinery. But when the then new coalition government announced its capital spending review in 2010, the e-learning programme was an obvious candidate for cutbacks. “This was meant to be a revolution in health-care training in the UK”, says Simon Shorvon, from the University College London Institute of Neurology (London, UK) and a clinical lead on ebrain since 2009. Instead the whole project was cut “almost overnight” in June, 2010.