Multitasking of Telemedicine Center is joint Pak-US collaboration. The main objectives of this training program are: Training of doctors and Nurses at National Level; training of Physiotherapists for tele-rehabilitation of earthquake effected paraplegics; Establishment of Tele-rehabilitation center at Muzaffarabad; Telemedicine Training of Earthquake effected Paraplegics treated at Holy Family Hospital and Rehabilitation of the earthquake effected paraplegics through Tele-rehabilitation.
Telemedicine
Training at National Level
Telemedicine training at national level is designed to train clinicians and
nurses from both tertiary care hospitals and primary care centers in the field
of telemedicine and thus enabling them to develop their own telemedicine projects
at their existing hospital networks. The idea is to train primary referring
doctor and nurse as well as doctor and nurse responding to these referrals
at the tertiary care hospital thus training staff of both ends of future telemedicine
projects of each hospital network.
Faculty
The teaching staff of Telemedicine/E-Health Training Center has been trained
locally and also at telemedicine centers of USA. The collaborating institutes
at USA have participated in development of telemedicine training manual for
the lab and experts from these centers are also involved in teaching sessions
through videoconferencing and then at the end of training they will visit
Pakistan to interact with trainees.
Training
Lab
This is specifically designed for telemedicine training and includes computer
workstations, telemedicine peripherals like derma-scopes & e-scopes and
a lot more. It has the facility of high bandwidth connectivity and videoconferencing.
There is wireless local area network between Operation theaters, outpatients
department, wards and demonstration rooms within the department which is then
linked to Tehsil Headquarter Hospital, Pindi Gheb, DHQ Hospital, DG Khan and
DHQ Attock via satellite.
The
Curriculum
The curriculum is unique as first of its kind which is designed specially
for the doctors and paramedics of Pakistan keeping in view the medical and
IT scenario of the country. This training program is of two weeks duration
and is strengthened by the involvement of telemedicine experts from USA who
will be delivering live lectures to trainees from USA and will also be visiting
the training project at the end of training sessions to give on hand telemedicine
training. The training manual has been designed to cover all areas training
including basic computer training, Telemedicine software and Tele-consultations
methodologies etc. The progress of trainees is monitored with help of Log
books for each trainee. This training program is categorized into three training
modules:
Module One:
Basic Computer Training:
The trainees are given the basic knowledge of computers and IT. It is designed
for beginners who don’t have any prior knowledge of computers, as most
of the doctors and paramedics in Pakistan lack the basic computer literacy.
The basic computer training includes training on Computer hardware, Microsoft
Office tools, Internet and e-mail, networking and telecommunication.
Module Two:
Telemedicine Training
The trainees will be taught the basics of telemedicine and its various applications.
They will be trained in network and architecture of telemedicine, use of basic
telemedicine equipment, including the telemedicine peripherals like electronic
stethoscope and derma scope. The trainees will be given an overview of Concept
of Telemedicine including tools and connectivity; various applications of
telemedicine, equipment interoperate ability and knowledge about Telemedicine
Software.
Module Three:
Hands on Telemedicine Training
The trainees will be given hands on training in telemedicine by doing real
time consultation on actual cases and mock patients using wireless network
within the department and then going to remote hospital at Pindi Gheb. Moreover
the trainees will be given special “State-of-art” interactive
lectures by the telemedicine experts from VCU, USA.
At the end of this module there will be final evaluation of each trainee.