The Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine has unique technology circumstances. The online learning team in the School of Graduate Education has developed practical and creative solutions to meet the needs of the GCSOM community.
The Geisinger Health System (GHS) is a regional health care provider to central, south-central and northeastern Pennsylvania serving more than three million patients in forty-five counties. GHS consists of ten hospitals and one school, the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine (GCSOM). GCSOM has a technology team, but IT within GHS is centralized, overseeing GCSOM IT. This has advantages from a system perspective but also many challenges, as GCSOM is a higher education institution, not a hospital. The internal IT team has a leader but no designated CIO. Additional challenges include no 24/7 help desk for students that provides technical support for educational technology platforms. To compensate for these shortcomings, the online learning team in the School of Graduate Education has created support resources for faculty, staff, and students, provides training for the GCSOM community, and provides technical support and assistance as needed for faculty, staff, and students with educational technology applications.