NTR University of Health Sciences (NTRUHS) has entered into an agreement with the Hyderabad-based Medical Education Research Centre (MEdRC) for Education Technologies (Edu Tech) to offer digitalised curriculum programme for the benefit of MBBS students.

The MEdRC is credited with pioneering in e-learning content production, multimedia software development, animation and LMS (an acronym for Learning Management System) integration.

MEdRC Edu Tech managing director, Dr Neeraj Raj, said "Digitalisation has been carried out of the entire MBBS curriculum as prescribed by the Medical Council of India into a series of over 7500 multimedia enhanced digital lectures". It was now offering first year MBBS content to begin with in accordance with the agreement entered into with the NTRUHS. The NTRUHS, which has been established in Vijayawada, exclusively for medical education, has 300 colleges affiliated to it. It is claimed that it is first of its kind.

The NTRUHS officials observed that these digitalised medical lectures would be taken up on experimental basis for the first three months. It would be extended further depending on the feedback from the students.

The system, called 'SmarTech UGMed' was a comprehensive e-learning programme targeted towards undergraduate medical students. It consisted of Tex, Tables, Flow Charts, Colour Stills, 2 D and 3 D Animations, Audio, and Video of Clinical Methods. Apart from clinics and case discussions, all searchable repositories of video lectures delivered by over 700 expert faculty and subject experts nominated and invited from all over India were part of the programme. These lectures were enriched by adding multimedia enhancements, Dr Raj said.

Medical education lagged behind in exploiting Information Technology as was the case with IIM and IIT education. This system may make up for shortage of 30-40 per cent of faculty in medical education. The shortage was affecting students a lot, Dr Raj pointed out.

NTR UHS officials said the module was installed on the occasion of 20th anniversary of the Dr NTR University of Health Sciences in the first week of this month.