UPM NThC participates in an international webinar workshop

August 7, 2010 4:21 am | by Nimrod Firaza, MD | Posted in News

Electronic TB Diagnostic Committee Project presented in a webinar

The University of the Philippines Manila National Telehealth Center, with its mandate to establish information technology linkage with international centers, participated remotely in a 2 day webinar workshop organized by Nepal NREN and CanalAVIST last August 4-5, 2010. The workshop entitled “Strengthening Efforts of Telemedicine among TEIN3 Communities” was supported by Trans Eurasia Information Network (TEIN3) HRD Program 2010 with objectives of inspecting the telemedicine efforts in the ASEAN region, exploring the major hindrance for strengthening telemedicine and e-health initiatives and deploying the CanalAVIST for ensuring high quality video communication in rural communities.

CanalAVIST is a part of the ASEAN Virtual Institute of Science and Technology (AVIST) and the ASEAN Science and Technology Research and Education Network Alliance (ASTRENA) under ASEAN Committee for Science and Technology to provide channels for seamless education, teaching, training, conferencing, lectures, and talks through ASEAN countries for ASEAN researchers and students. It utilizes the TEIN3 to deliver lectures and streaming VDO to members of TEIN3, ASEAN, Europe and Australia with the use of ranging from H.263 to DVTS supported by an e-learning platform VClass (see www.vclass.net) by the Internet Education and Research Lab, Asian Institute of Technology.

Among the presented telemedicine efforts in the region is one of the center’s projects which is entitled “Electronic TB Diagnostic Committee” and presented by its project manager Dr. Paul Nimrod Firaza. The project is about using iPATH, a free and open source telemedicine platform, as an online meeting place for TB Diagnostic Committee to review difficult cases of TB in the underserved areas of the country.

The workshop was organized in Kathmandu, Nepal during the TEIN3 NOC Workshops at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. TEIN3 member countries, CanalAVIST members and all the interested research and education communities remotely participated in the event. The newly connected TEIN3 members and some south Asian countries shared their knowledge and practical experience through CanalAVIST broadcasting facilities.