Medical colleges to be knit into natl network

The National Task Force on Telemedicine, set up by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, is establishling a national grid on telemedicine for networking of medical colleges called the National Medical College Network.

This was informed by Deputy Commissioner, Union Ministry of Health, NK Dhamija here on Sunday.

Under this project, a few tertiary care academic medical institutes from various regions of the country have been identified as the Medical Knowledge Resource Centres (regional hub), each of which will be connected to medical colleges (nodes) in that region.

“The facilities under this project comprise of virtual classroom/digital lecture theatre, Undergraduate lecture sharing, remote participation, skill sharing among health professionals, massive open online courses for health and medical professionals,” Dhamija said.

He was speaking at the First Conference of Maharashtra Chapter of Telemedicine Society of India, MahaTelemedicon’13.

“The national Medical College Network will be connected with the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN is a state-of-the-art multi-gigabyte pan-India network for providing a unified high speed network backbone for all the knowledge-related institutions in the country,” Dhamija said.

It will enable scientists, researchers and students from different backgrounds and diverse geographies to work closely for advancing human development in critical and emerging areas.

NETWORKING MED SCHOOLS