ANU Computer Science Technical Reports

TR-CS-10-01


Duncan Stevenson, Garry Warne, Mai Eames, Maurice Hennessy, Dan Penny, Jim Wilkinson, and Simon Pase.
Delivery of Postgraduate Medical Training to Developing Countries - A Pilot Study.
September 2010.

[POSTSCRIPT (15691023 bytes)] [PDF (14030639 bytes)]


Abstract: We present a pilot study of delivering postgraduate medical training to doctors in developing countries using Internet-based videoconferencing. In the context of a multiple-component training program we delivered a lecture series in paediatric cardiology from specialists at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, to an audience in Hue, in central Vietnam. This study looks at the effectiveness of using videoconferencing to the developing world at this advanced level of teaching.

We conclude that it is possible to deliver postgraduate-level medical training by providing the lecturer with a modern Internet videoconference system even though the receiving audience may have older and less capable videoconferencing systems. Unlike traditional videoconferencing, this type of lecturing scenario is asymmetric. For the lecturer it requires high-quality support for computer/laptop screen capture and a simple user interface to toggle between laptop screen and view of the remote audience. For the remote audience it requires a wide camera angle at sufficient resolution to capture individual audience member's movements and access for all the audience to the system's microphone array. Where there is only support for a single-screen display, the lecturer can use thumbnail views of the audience and an open audio link and toggle between audience and computer screen to maintain a personal connection with the audience during the lecture.


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