Elentra, a powerful Learning Management System (LMS) specifically designed for medical residency programs, is quickly gaining popularity all across North America. Elentra, formerly known as Entrada, was founded by two Queen’s Health Sciences Education Technology staff members, Matt Simpson and Andrew Dos-Santos. Elentra was originally launched in 2004 and was designed to integrate course material into an online platform for those studying health sciences, as well as help professors and administrators with organizational tasks. In March of 2008, the Entrada platform was named and trademarked. Then, 10 years later, Entrada rebranded to become Elentra, however the team insisted on maintaining the quality of its product and its ties to Queen’s University.
Elentra is a ‘community-sourced integrated teaching and learning platform’ that is suited for health science education due to its ability to integrate education and clinical scheduling and management. Since its launch, the Elentra Consortium has grown to accommodate 14 different medical schools across the globe, including Northwestern University, University of Toronto, and schools as far away as National University of Singapore (NUS). Elentra was first integrated at Queen’s University in their School of Medicine, School of Rehabilitation Therapy, and for the Life Sciences Program. The Elentra platform consists of three separate products that can be used alone or alongside one another.
Elentra Admissions
This platform, which is designed for admission officers, provides a ranking system of applicants and allows them to review applicant files. Elentra Admissions provides applicants the ability to book their own interview online. The service also allows for the distribution of acceptance, rejection, as well as waitlist letters. This powerful tool allows for administrators to easily access all their needs to organize, sort, and accept their potential medical students for the upcoming year.
Elentra ME
Elentra ME is designed to organize the education of undergraduate and graduate medical students. There are 7 features within this platform. The ‘curriculum mapping and reporting’ feature allows for course objectives to be planned, as well as allows a space for graded assessments, assessment forms and allows for the planning of educational events. There is also a built-in academic and clinical calendar, allowing both students and administrators to have knowledge of where individuals are meant to be at any given time. The ‘learning management platform’ is the backbone of the Elentra platform. This feature allows the ability to manage and schedule the various types of learning that is necessary for an education in health sciences. Elentra allows instructors to evaluate their students, as well as the ability for students to conduct self, peer, and small group evaluations. The Elentra ME platform also includes a ePortfolio, which includes documents and personal reflections that can be subjective to submission guidelines and due dates. Built in to every faculty member’s Elentra portfolio is annual faculty reporting as well as a publication reporting platform.
Elentra CPD
Elentra CPD is for physicians or other medical professionals to continue their education by providing access to information from their institutions program. This information can be managed by the administrative staff at your facility.
Do You Want to Learn More About Elentra?
Elentra Engage is a conference presented by Elentra that will be taking place on September 17th and 18th, 2018. This conference will showcase the faculty and staff from medical schools all over to provide an educational networking experience. This year’s conference will specifically focus on the needs of Administrators and Faculty members.
The conference is to take place at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue. They have partnered with Delta Hotels Vancouver Downtown Suites who is offering a conference rate for accommodations. The agenda includes application programming interface (API) workshops, Management plan workshops and talks, platform presentations, and tours of the Elentra platform. Since the conference is still a few months away, there is not a lot of information on the agenda, aside from a general outline posted to the Elentra Engage website. If you would like to know more... more
Elentra has announced, however, Rhonda St. Croix as the keynote speaker of this year’s event. Rhonda St. Croix is the Change Advisor in the Office of Specialty Education, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Rhonda is also a certified leadership coach and holds a certificate in Ethics, a CMA designation, and an MBA. Elentra Engage provides a platform for medical professionals to network with other medical professionals and developing their skills as medical personnel.
Though Elentra is an innovative LMS for medical schools, it still has many competitors, such as Moodle, Blackboard, ISpring, and Scitent. Queen’s University also has its own version on Brightspace, known as OnQ, which is used for the majority of Queen’s undergraduate programs. These platforms all provide a similar experience to Elentra and they each provide unique features, such as the ability to upload files, videos, documents, and web pages, and provide blended learning experiences and online training features. LMS platforms such as Moodle and Blackboard are largely used across North American universities and are well known globally within academic institutions. What is unique about Elentra is that it has been designed by a medical school specifically for medical residency programs. Since Elentra is designed for health science students, their features are specialized for the needs of the medical education community, unlike platforms such as Moodle and Blackboard, which program-agnostic. Elentra ultimately provides a unique platform for medical education that is unlike any of its competitors for this specific reason.
In the medical field there are many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products created to help improve the lives of medical staff and students across the globe. Services such as Elentra, helping medical students and professors, and MESH AI, which aids medical facilities by providing a staff scheduling software. MESH AI’s scheduling software is carefully created to be used in all medical settings, from scheduling doctors and nurses in a hospital to keeping track of all residence schedules. MESH AI is a powerful tool that provides one location for all of your scheduling needs, including an automated scheduling tool, a shift-swapping platform known as the Bazaar, and a messaging platform. By integrating both Elentra and MESH AI into your university’s resident program, you are providing your residents and administrative staff with all the tools they will need to ensure success at your university.
