Infectious disease cases for educational purposes: open-access resources on the Internet

The use of medical cases in the problem-based learning approach has been increasing in medical schools worldwide. We collected information regarding the relevant World Wide Web resources with infectious diseases cases for educational purposes by searching frequently used Internet search engines (i.e., Google, AltaVista, and Yahoo), the PubMed database, and Current Contents, as well as the Web sites of each of the US medical schools and other major institutions and organizations. We compiled a list of Internet links of 25 English-language, open-access (free) World Wide Web resources of educational cases in the field of infectious diseases. We collected information regarding the case developers, the number of the presented cases, the types and modes of the case presentations, and the target groups of the Web pages. Although we did not aim to generate an exhaustive list of relevant Web sites, we believe that a readily available list of electronic resources of medical cases with a focus on infectious diseases will be useful to medical students and physicians in training and practice.