BEST Network

The BEST Network is a not-for-profit collaboration of universities developing and sharing technologies for image-based education and assessment. The Network’s vision is that every educator and every student, wherever they are, has access to the best image-based resources in biomedical and life sciences. The BEST Network’s most widely used application is Slice, an award winning curated collection of over 22,000 images with tools to bring engagement to images. Slice, is an innovative cloud-based application, and functions as a kind of “Google Maps of biomedical images”. Its capacity to display and annotate virtual microscopy images enables faculty at the world’s top universities to provide their students with images of human, animal and microbial tissues, both in health and disease. Using the Slice tools, academics extend student learning by marking up features on images and sharing them with students, or encouraging students to make their own notes or participate in group activities.