"WWW.MDTF.ORG": a World Wide Web forum for developing open-architecture, freely distributed, digital teaching file software by participant consensus.

PURPOSE: To foster a community supported evaluation processes for open-source digital teaching file (DTF) development and maintenance. The mechanisms used to support this process will include standard web browsers, web servers, forum software, and custom additions to the forum software to potentially enable a mediated voting protocol. The web server will also serve as a focal point for beta and release software distribution, which is the desired end-goal of this process. CONCLUSIONS: We foresee that www.mdtf.org will provide for widespread distribution of open source DTF software that will include function and interface design decisions from community participation on the website forums.

A simple mechanism for sharing and transporting medical digital case information across disparate computer language and data storage environments.

It is challenging to remotely share generic medical case information without an agreed upon definition of a medical digital teaching file (DTF). By utilizing an application of the extensible markup language (XML) called web-distributed data exchange (WDDX) along with an agreed upon WDDX structure, it is technically easy to share or syndicate medical case DTFs across computing environments that use different information models and computer languages. Thus, this easily implemented technology offers us an immediately available means to share and increase the value of scientific knowledge.