Pharmacological practice is important for understanding pharmacological effects from the point of view of active learning in medical education. However, it is very difficult to perform the practices using experimental animals in recent years, because of animal welfare, cost and so on.
We, therefore, developed novel simulation system for animal pharmacological practice using iPad. In our system, each student can access to the Cloud using iPad and simulate the situations for application of various drugs and reagents to atrium, ileum and circulation in whole animal. In addition, students are given various assignments about the pharmacological effects of drugs and reagents and try to solve them. Reports from students about the simulator are prepared by the processes to solve the assignments and their results. Therefore, our system is one of the "problem-based active learning" system.
It is difficult for complete replacement of animal-based pharmacological practice to simulator-based one in present time. However, our simulation system may be useful for reduction of the number of animal use in pharmacological practice.