Now, distance learning for medical education

An acute shortage of teaching facility has prompted the government to go for distance education through e-networking of the government medical colleges and identified 50 colleges, including Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences and six new AIIMS at Bhopal, Raipur, Jodhpur and three other places, to be covered in the first phase.

The Union Health Ministry has already identified a firm for networking all these colleges to provide classroom teaching through distance education using the technology under the centrally-sponsored All India Medical College Tele-Medicine Network approved back in 2014.

The facility will be up and running within six months that will enable the teaching faculties of the big institutes to mentor online the students of the colleges devoid of teachers. The Sanjay Gandhi Post-gradaute Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPI) at Lucknow will function as a national resource centre where infrastructure for executing the job has been already installed, a Health Ministry official said.

The medical colleges in 28 states and Union territories to be e-networked in the first phase include Goa Medical College in Goa, KEM, Mumbai, Govt Medical College, Nagpur and Govt Medical College, Aurangabad, in Maharashtra, AIIMS, Jodhpur, and SMS Medical College, Jaipur, AIIMS, Bhopal, and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical Collee, Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh, BJ Medical College, Ahmedabad and Govt Medical College, Surat in Gujarat, and Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences, Hubli, Manglore Medical College, Mangalore, and NIMHANS, Bengaluru.