Editorial
Case Report | Volume 8 | Issue 2 | JOCR Mar – Apr 2018 | Page 1-2| Shyam A. DOI: 10.13107/jocr.2250-0685.1020
OrthoTV – an Orthopaedic Knowledge channel and much more
Authors: Ashok Shyam [1, 2]
[1] Indian Orthopaedic Research Group, Thane, India.
[2] Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Pune, India.
Address of Correspondence:
Dr. Ashok Shyam,
Department of Orthopaedic, Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Pune, India.
E-mail: drashokshyam@gmail.com
The technology epoch is taking medical education by storm. The entire landscape of academic journal publishing has been uplifted in last 5 years. There have been advantages and disadvantages of this upliftment. Advantage was that academics could break free from the clutches of big publishes and increase its outreach. The disadvantage is mushrooming of predatory publishers taking advantage of gullible researchers. Technology has also affected medical education in other ways too and one of the major way is a shift from print medium to a more visual medium of videos. With increased internet speed and low cost of data the interest in video content has increased in last one year. The Orthopaedic Research Group [publishers of JOCR] have also taken cognisance of this change in pattern and our think tank has come up with the idea of OrthoTV
OrthoTV as an idea was first used in 2013 by ORG for making an entire conference online by slicing the videos and then putting them online. This was very well appreciated but as the videos were very heavy and the internet speed was less it could not reach many surgeons. Howe now with improved technology we can compress the videos and with increased internet speed it is easily downloadable and viewed online. We restarted OrthoTV Project in early 2017 and the response was exceptional. Every video that we put online was viewed and reviewed again and again by many ortho colleagues as if they were hungry for such a portal. Although vumedi exists but a focussed portal for orthopaedics did not exists and probably that is the reason why it was so successful. In mid of next year, we found another piece of technology which was very interesting. This was the technology of Live Streaming of long events. This technology was used by political parties or other non-medical events where this was used to reach general public. We planned to use this technology to do Live Transmission of an entire conference online which can reach all orthopaedic surgeons across the globe. We were happy with the technology, but the real challenge was trying to find a conference organiser who is ready to take up this concept. Luckily our editorial board member Dr Parag Sancheti was organising the Asia Pacific Arthroplasty Society Meeting in August of 2017. He found the concept really appealing and provided OrthoTV its first platform to do a Live transmission of an entire event. The three days APAS conference was relayed Live from Chennai and was watched by more than 8000 orthopaedic surgeons across the globe including more than 250 cities and 50 countries. This was an amazing response to this concept and was a pleasant surprise to all of us. Since that time OrthoTV has done Live Transmission of more than 40 event including the National Orthopaedic Conference of India the IOACON, The western regional orthopaedic conference, the Ranawat orthopaedic conference and many more events. This amounts to more than 500 hrs of great academic content and this includes, orations by master surgeons, debates, free papers, case discussions and much more. Since last three months OrthoTV has also covered events with Live Surgeries and now a library of more than 100 procedures is available online with us.
This entire content is rich in academics and is on varied speciality subjects like arthroplasty, arthroscopy, paediatric orthopaedics, Orthopaedic trauma, spine surgery and much more. This is available online for free to orthopaedic surgeons and has created a kind of academic library which can be accessed anytime form anywhere. OrthoTV has been a boon to many specially in rural areas who cannot travel to far corners of countries to attend conferences can now watch the events at their home. We have received numerous letter of thanks and appreciation for creating this portal and continue to receive them. In last 6 months we had compiled viewing of more than 2 lakh ortho surgeon on the portal and 3500 registered members on the website. This has encouraged us and has our think tank working over time to create something more and beyond what we are doing.
We wish to make OrthoTV the best video portal for orthopaedics in the world and for that we need to further understand the need of ortho surgeons and how we can provide the best service. We have come up with new concepts that we can use like holding regular online streaming of major conferences and courses and enriching the content. In addition, we have developed the technology to conduct purely online by Live CME’s which can get together faculty from all over the country on one virtual platform. This will be tremendous utility to many specially the young trainees.
We have planned to identify and establish E-training centres across the country. We will be establishing equipment and infrastructure to create Live transmission of surgeries directly from Operation theatre of these centre of excellence. This will be akin to Live training of an entire online audience of the country. We are planning to hold these live surgery sessions once a week in each of these hospitals. We have received approvals from three of these centres and we will be starting these activities soon. This will be available only to registered an ratified members of OrthoTV. This will also help these centres of excellence to outreach a vast populace of orthopaedic surgeons and create a niche for themselves in field of academics.
We are also planning to create a portal for e-mentoring of individual trainees. However, the infrastructure requirement of this is much more and this will take a longer period of time. A new digital Journal of Orthopaedic is planned by selecting and peer reviewing the content from OrthoTV and publishing them in format of an ejournal. This will help authors connect to their readers in a video format and we believe this will help them convey their ideas much better than writing it in text only.
There few more ideas which are still in incubation phase like getting medical council credit points for the content on OrthoTV and liaising with accreditation bodies, however we shall try and create the manpower and resources slowly to build this ambitious project. We will definitely need more ideas from all our readers and we will request them to visit www.orthotvonline.com and register themselves for free. You can send your comments to us at editor.jocr@gmail.com or orthotvonlne@gmail.com
We shall discuss some more about OrthoTV in our next editorial also, till then we are awaiting your suggestions
Regards
Dr Ashok Shyam
Editor – JOCR
| How to Cite This Article: Shyam A. OrthoTV – an Orthopaedic Knowledge channel and much more. Journal of Orthopaedic Case Reports 2018 Mar-Apr;8(2):Page 1-2. |
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