Chandigarh: Bringing good news to the students of government medical colleges across the country, the telemedicine department of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) has developed 20 modules for providing free online lectures and learning materials aligned with their course.
While initially these lessons/ tutorials will be provided to the north Indian colleges, gradually students of all private medical colleges will also be roped in.
PGIMER is one of the seven Regional Resource Centres in the country. PGIMER has been designated as RCC- North by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
While these lectures will not be credit-based, students undergoing the course shall get certificates by the PGI and other resource centres. Apart from PGI, other resource centres include AIIMS Rishikesh; King Edward Memorial, Mumbai; Government Medical College Thiruvananthapuram; Jipmer Puducherry, SGPGI Lucknow; BHU Varanasi, North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, Shillong. AIIMS Delhi is the NRC.
Back in 2013, the Union Health Ministry had made announcements regarding the National Medical College Network project and at that time, altogether seven RRCs and one national resource centre had been created.
The Union Health Ministry recently demanded the creation of a Learning Management Information system (LMIS) for the undergraduate (MBBS) medical students.
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Accordingly, PGIMER has developed 20 modules in this regard, and commenting on this, the in-charge of the telemedicine department, Prof Biman Saikia told the Times of India, "This is a free tutorial to be provided by experts from institutes like the PGI to MBBS students who would want to get extra knowledge about any topic they are keen to learn. Our faculty has worked with us and we have developed modules for teaching."
Last year, the LMIS module started taking shape and the colleges and institutes involved with the Health Ministry started recording lectures given to them. The top faculties of the institute have been recording the lectures.
The daily adds that already 124 modules have been recorded and uploaded on the site. Students can get access to these modules with validated student registration identity cards.
Speaking about this, Dr. Amit Agarwal of PGI Department of Telemedicine said, "We have already developed 22 modules for this initiative with the help of various department's faculty."
"There are various videos and online teaching material for other professionals, but not for the doctors. This is the only standarised platform which can be accessed by any doctor enrolled even in remote medical colleges," he added.
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