Netbased education for orthopedics engineers - pilot project
With his pilot project we will attempt to find out how telemedicine can be used to educate orthopedics engineers and as consultation between clinics in Cambodia.
Project description
In September NST completed a project trip to Cambodia. There they visited the school, two hospitals in Phnom Penh and a workshop in Sihanoukville, a small village near the coast. The Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics (CSPO) and NST arranged a workshop with all the partners to the school. These are the International Red Cross, Handicap International, Emergency hospital in Battambang, Vietnam Veterans, the Health department and Hope Hospital. At the workshop NST presented possibilities of using telemedicine in the south. The partners agreed that telemedicine was usable in a land with an infrastructure of Cambodia's level. Hope Hospital was already using telemedicine for patient consultation with clinics in northern Cambodia (via satellite). The Red Cross had already been using DVDs with education programmes that was sent out to the districts of Cambodia.
They all agreed to develop a net based education programme for orthopedics engineers. This could be the start of using telemedicine for patient consultation between clinics in the city and outside the city. An education programme must follow ISPO's quality requirements and the contents in the education.
At the start of the project there was a connection established with the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) www.ispo.ws. The NST have in a collaboration with ISPO prepared a proposal for a main project. An application for funding this project has been sent to NORAD before the deadline 1 October 2005. The project will develop four modules in the following fields: Arm prosthetics, Spinal orthoses, clubfoot and Community Based Rehabilitation. This will be a first start on developing an entire programme for net based education for orthopedics engineers on a university level. All schools in the South relies on access to an education for orthopedics engineers. Today the competence is bought from western countries and the schools relies more and more on the competence from the western countries.
The proposition for the education in the four first modules will be offered to students at CSPO from all over Asia. Further offers will go to students at Tatcot in Tanzania that has students from the english speaking countries in Africa and to students at Bon Bosco University in El Salvador that has students from South -and Central America. So that telemedicine can contribute to increase competence from north to south without having the students travel to Europe, USA or Japan to complete a university study.
A main project will contribute to make the assignment WHO has given NST real on a global level.
Financing
Project partners
NSTs partners in this study have been Sophies Mindes AS and Norsk Dysmeliforening.