Speech Title: The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology: web-based interactive multimedia connected with simulation environment.
Abstract: The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology designed as a multimedia-teaching tool, which helps to explain the function of individual physiological systems, causes and symptoms of their disorders in a visual way through the Internet is one of the projects in which we want to utilize new opportunities of multimedia and simulation models. When creating a web simulator, two types of problems must be taken into consideration. The first problem is the creation and identification of the mathematical model. This work is more of a research than development work, based on the creation of formalized mathematical description of the modeled reality. For the creation, tweaking/debugging and verification of simulation models, special software development tools are used. For a long time we have mostly been using Matlab/Simulink models, made by Mathworks, for the development process. Recently, we have been using a simulation environment based on the Modelica language. The other problem is the creation of the tutorial software itself. It is a very demanding development work, which requires the combination of ideas and experiences of teachers who create the script of the tutorial application, the creativity of art designers who create the multimedia components interconnected with the simulation model in the background, as well as the efforts of programmers who finally “sew up” the final masterpiece into its final shape. For the interdisciplinary collective creation to be successful, specific development tools with sufficient technical support must be used in each phase of creation; such tools allow for component-based creation of simulation models, creation of interactive multimedia and their final interconnection into a compact unit based on the given design. For connections Modelica development tools with development environment for simulator design (e.g. Microsoft Visual Studio) we have used Functional Mock-Up Interface (FMI) standard. The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology is a freely available application.
Keywords: simulation; physiology; education; models; simulation games; interactive multimedia; Modelica; FMI