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- Schedule
- Objective
- Participants
- Technological possibilities
- Topics
- Volume of information
- Communication and sponsors
- Committee and officers
- Cost of the project
- Time scale
- Improved communication and patient care
- Synopsis
Communication Platform for Surgeons in Nepal
Positioning Paper
Objectives:
- A Forum for communication between experts.
- An affordable platform for publication.
- A voice for Nepalese surgeons in the international medical and scientific community and the enhancement of their involvement in it.
- An opportunity to educate medical doctors, improve health services and facilitate basic research in Nepal.
In detail:
To provide a discussion forum and knowledge platform for medical professionals in Nepal.
To offer an opportunity for dialogue between surgeons in Nepal and designated experts internationally, e.g. virtual congress.
To facilitate publication of case reports, review articles, topic and member centered communications, etc. from authors in Nepal.
To raise awareness of surgical practice in Nepal, e.g. participators could put links to the Nepal site on their own site.
To create social ties by goodwill, mutual support, common goals, shared interest, and a sense of mutual obligation.
Reasons:
Many surgeons are unable to subscribe or contribute to mainstream medical journals. Costs may be prohibitive but also a low income country cannot achieve the standards of GCP/GLP. Furthermore, the issues of interest to and directly affecting surgeons in Nepal are not necessarily issues of cutting edge research.
Manuscript submission to an online journal can cost $520, which is prohibitive for many authors/institutions.
Many cannot attend international conferences or congresses in order to upgrade their knowledge and benefit from information exchange with medical colleagues.
Language of the site: English
Participants:
Orthopaedic surgeons, traumatologists, and other medical specialists, e.g. maxillofacial / spine surgeons as partners in the developed world and medical professionals in Nepal.
Infrastructure:
Dr. Shah has stated that there is Internet Access and Internet Literacy in almost all cities in Nepal. The technology in Nepal consists of telephone line connections at 30–50 kbps. Broadband and fiberoptic cable are not available.
There are experts available in Nepal to oversee the project.
Prerequisites:
Surgeons must be willing to learn how to use the technology. Computer literacy, social design and engineering are important.
Information to be uploaded:
Summaries from papers published by the particating surgeons, i.e. by Nepalese surgeons and by their designated international partners.
Case Reports by Nepalese surgeons.
Current Medical Literature Summaries as selected by the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Shah, in collaboration with the Editorial Board.
Information on EBOS, open source, movement.
Possibly a bi-annual Newsletter presenting current topics affecting medicine in Nepal and issues relating to the Communication Platform.
Sponsorships (partner surgeons/clinics):
Information exchange between surgeons in Nepal and hospitals worldwide. Individual surgeons would agree to give a certain amount of time per week/month to answer specific questions, whereby the amount of time required for the necessary discussions needs to be estimated. It may be useful for teams of surgeons to go to Nepalese hospitals/medical institutions for the purpose of assisting at surgery and/or updating local surgeons in technique. Sponsoring clinics could agree to invite a surgeon from Nepal to an international medical congress once a year.
Dr. Shah has the support and sponsorship of www.healthnet.org.np run by Boston based Satelife for our project.
Financing:
Links to medical device companies producing devices that are affordable for low and middle income countries and that offer guarantees of safety, effectiveness and adequate pharmaceutical and medical quality. The companies might pay for their link to be on the site plus a fixed sum for each registered hit on their link.
Some pharmaceutical companies donate urgently needed medicinal products or offer them at cost price, possibly Novartis.
Pilot Phase:
A pilot phase of 1 year could be agreed whereby the Communication Platform would be set up in a limited way to ensure that the model is functional and in order to assess the amount of work and the real cost of the programme. A re-evaluation would then take place.
J. Buchanan
Hombrechtikon, 25. September, 2004
Feasibility Discussion
Participants:
- Dr. R. K. Shah, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Kathmandu, Nepal
- Mr T. Burg, Head of the Center for New Media, Danube University Krems, Austria
- Joy Buchanan, Author, CH-Hombrechtikon
- Interested surgeons electing to participate.
Date: From 1. October 2004
Place: http://nepalsurgeons.notlong.com
Subject: Communication Platform for Surgeons in Nepal
Agenda
- Discussion of the objectives including what we do not want and estimated costs.
- Discussion of who should participate.
- Discussion of the technological possibilities.
- What sort of platform would be practicable and what services would it include?
- Is there any site already in existence that could handle our needs, e.g. a site being maintained by a sponsor?
- How would the site be divided up, e.g. by topic, by region, by institution?
- What technical support is available in Nepal and from Krems?
- Consideration of the topics to be addressed. Should topics be restricted to orthopaedics and traumatology or include general health, disease, political and financial concerns, etc.
- What would be the estimated volume of information being exchanged?
- How should the sponsors be kept informed?
- Discussion of practical management including tasks and distribution of roles:
- System of submission and approval, monitoring, quality control, leadership, role of the committee, evaluation of whether the objectives are being effectively achieved, technological maintenance,
- modification and upgrading, moderator, superauthor, site management, coordination, preparation of
- annual report, archiving, calculation of costs within a specified time frame, liability, etc.
- Is it possible to estimate the cost for each center in Nepal and/or the total cost of the project? Will publication by this means be more cost-effective than through the existing channels?
- What sort of time scale are we looking at to get the project running and for it to become a stable institution?
- Does the concept proposed here really offer advantages compared with the existing means of communication, e.g. journals, congresses, and will it lead to the main objective of improved patient care in Nepal.
Attachments: