Components of the StoneRounds System

StoneRounds is a collection of five types of information:

Disease Atlas

The heart of the site is a large (and growing) atlas of de-identified clinical information obtained from individuals seen with inherited retinal disease of known molecular cause. The images from the atlas, while copyrighted by the University of Iowa, can be freely downloaded as images or PowerPoint presentations by anyone who wishes to use them for nonprofit educational purposes or research. The Atlas has been organized using a classification system that we devised by studying 1000 consecutive families in the Iowa Inherited Retinal Disease Clinic (Stone, et al., 2017).

Clinic Simulator

Many of the cases from the Atlas can also be viewed in a simulator that has been designed to emulate the decision-making challenges facing a busy faculty member seeing complicated inherited retinal disease patients in a clinic with very competent house officers. The house officers have gathered TONS of information. In what order do you want to see it? How much of it do you want to see before making a diagnosis? How quickly can you get close to the correct diagnosis? This simulator will score your efficiency in getting to the right answer. Challenge your colleagues to beat your cumulative score!

Resources for Learning about Inherited Retinal Diseases

This section contains a series of narrated lectures and written summaries that cover the basic features of the anatomy and physiology of the retina as well as the cardinal clinical features of the most important inherited retinal diseases. Some of these lectures also have associated self-assessment tests and other study aids to help you gauge and/or solidify your understanding of the material. Once you have a good understanding of all the material in this section, you will be ready to gain a more in-depth knowledge of these diseases in a more realistic clinical setting using the Clinic Simulator.

Group Teaching

We have also developed a group teaching mode that provides a framework for guided learning in Inherited Retinal Diseases using the cases available on StoneRounds.org. Instead of an instructor projecting their session in a room and soliciting the audience for input and opinions, the students can participate using their own devices from any location with an internet connection. Group teaching sessions encourage students to explore the clinical data in a self-guided fashion and allows students to individually work on developing complete or partial diagnoses, while the instructor highlights important features to the group. This same framework allows the instructor to observe students’ diagnostic thought process in real time. A document describing how to create new teaching sets, and how to join existing group teaching sessions can be found here.

Media

The media section contains links to recorded lectures, educational videos, related websites and other audio/visual content.

Success Camp

Curing heritable blindness will require more than technology. It will require teams of dedicated people, with a clear vision of their mission and a positive attitude that they can overcome any adversity. Success Camp contains a collection of writings that we have found useful for building teams, creating shared vision and developing an unshakable positive attitude.