eLearning and Health Education

Virtual Operating Theatres for International Cooperation!

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International surgery specialists can now operate in hospitals all over the world without leaving their home country, as eLearning Africa 2009 will prove on Wednesday May 27th, 2009 at one of the most keenly anticipated pre-conference events. Professors Cheikh Tidiane Touré and Bara Diop in Dakar, in collaboration with Professor Guy-Bernard Cadière in Brussels, have created three practical demonstrations of surgical training carried out remotely with the aid of new technological resources. Whether they link Senegal and Belgium or a hospital in Dakar and a health centre in the Senegalese countryside, new technologies eliminate distances and offer cutting-edge teaching to all students and medical staff, even in the most remote regions.

Telementoring between Brussels and Dakar

Can a surgery lecture be given by a professor in Belgium to students in Senegal? With new technologies, the answer is now ‘yes’ and Professor Guy-Bernard Cadière will demonstrate how, exclusively for eLearning Africa. His students will be able to see a colectomy, or the resection of the large intestine, performed live by the Belgian professor in a Brussels hospital. The internationally renowned specialist will also view a coelioscopic cholecystectomy, or removal of the gallbladder, performed by Doctor Cissé in the lecture theatre of the general surgery department of the A. Dantec hospital in Dakar. Both operations will be conducted by videosurgery, a cutting-edge technology featuring a videoconference system using a 384kb ISDN link and a coelioscopic endoscope fitted with a video camera. The project was launched in 2001 and aims to show that new technologies can help to improve training for surgeons.

Distance learning between Dakar and Kaffrine

Professor Cheikh Tidiane Touré and his team of doctors and nurses will perform a demonstration of a surgical dressing in the lecture theatre of the general surgery department of the A. Dantec hospital in Dakar. The paramedical staff of the health centre in Kaffrine, a small town in central Senegal, will take part in the demonstration by videoconference. The Professor and his pupils will be connected by a state-of-the-art computer system, a 10 megabit ADSL connection and a “smart” board. This type of distance training session in medical procedures for professional staff will be the first of its kind in Senegal and will open up new possibilities for teaching and medical training across the entire country. The pilot scheme undertaken in Kaffrine and Sokone may later be extended to other health establishments. For instance, a trial radiology remote consultation between these two towns and Dakar University Hospital is due to be undertaken.

Remote consultation between Dakar and Saint Louis

Connecting all the regional hospitals in Senegal would allow specialists working in the hospitals to improve their diagnostic skills and expertise thanks to continuous distance learning. Professor Bara Diop will present the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies with an example of inter-hospital cooperation. For this occasion, the Dakar Fann University Hospital, where the Senegalese professor will conduct the session, will be connected to the hospital in Saint Louis, a coastal town to the north of the capital.

The workshop “Demonstrations of Telemedicine” will take place on May 27, 2009, from 9:00 – 13:00. Please click here for registration.

May 9, 2009

Newsportal: eLearning and Health Education