The use of IT for teaching and student learning has come a long way in the last two decades. In 1976, when I first joined the Department of Social Medicine and Public Health (now known as COFM), I knew IT could help make learning biostatistics “painless” for our students. Some of the early IT tools that I had worked with included the key-punch machine and card sorter to help students process health data (1976), and the TRS-80 microcomputer to run statistical analyses and computer-based MCQ tests (1978).

Over the next few years, I worked on mainframe- based activities, facilitating a leased-line link between the SMPH department at Outram Park and the Computer Centre at Kent Ridge and teaching students how to use the SAS statistical package for health data processing and analyses.

In 1985, when SMPH was relocated to Kent Ridge and became known as COFM, we set up NUH’s first microcomputer-based teaching laboratory comprising some 20 PC-AT machines for biostatistics tutorials. I also began developing electronic lectures in biostatistics using IBM’s PC Storyboard software.

In 1990, with the help of the Computer Centre, we upgraded the COFM teaching laboratory at NUH to a state-of-the-art computer classroom comprising 50 networked PCs and printers, three 33” digital/analog display monitors and other AV facilities.

More recently, under the Medical Informatics Programme, I built an Experimental Distance Learning Server to evaluate various IT tools for online delivery of Continuing Medical Education (CME), including giving remote lectures over the Internet.