Live-streaming of surgeries at RML Hospital for students

NEW DELHI: Classrooms for medical students at Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) have gone high-tech with the hospital soon installing cameras in its operation theatres (OTs).

NEW DELHI: Classrooms for medical students at Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) have gone high-tech with the hospital soon installing cameras in its operation theatres (OTs).

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The students will now be able to watch all surgeries from their classrooms and pose questions to the surgeon in real time.

“Due to the risk of infections and logistical constraints, only six or seven can observe a surgery at the moment. We are not able to provide hands-on training to all the students at once. However, when this technology is installed all students will be able to see the surgeries live in great detail with the state-of-theart cameras that will be installed in the OTs,” said Dr Rajeev Sood, dean of post-graduate institute of medical education and research, Dr RML hospital.

Live-streaming of surgeries is a part of the e-education initiative of the hospital, which will start functioning by the end of the year, for which the government has allocated ` 60 lakh to the institute.

The funds will be used to set up virtual classrooms, where a lecturer will be able to take 17 classes together. “At present, whenever a guest lecturer comes to a medical college the PG students, who work in the hospital as residents, take leave to go to the institute. With this system in place, students will be able to attend the lectures from the hospitals where they work,” said Dr Sood.

The system will be able to stream expert lectures from across the world.

Another major benefit of the system is the archiving facility. “If a student is on vacation or misses a lecture, they will be able to find it in our archives. This way nobody will miss out on their training,” Dr Sood said.

More than 300 medical journals will be available free of cost to the students on the system. “Right now, the students have to go to the library to access the free copies of the journals, even the ones that are available online. With the e-education system, the students can log in through their own laptops or mobile phones and access these journals,” Dr Sood explained.