Buzz4health, a leading provider of mobile based content to medical professionals, has announced that it will introduce a year long virtual reality (VR) based fellowship programme in orthopaedics by August this year. The programme will provide orthopaedic surgeons hands-on simulated learning experience wherein they feel operating room environment while learning.

The VR technology based fellowship programme will be very interactive module and completely different from the healthcare startup's mobile, laptop based continuing medical education (CME) programmes. It will be integrated with mobile app. Buzz4health has run two successful pilots for this programme. Users attending the programme need to wear headgears, Google glasses to get simulated learning experience. The healthcare startup has already applied for patent for this module, said Tushar Gupta, CTO, Buzz4health.

Virtual reality orthopaedics fellowship has been developed by a panel of doctors from AIIMS, Medanta Hospital and Max Hospital. Any practicing orthopaedic surgeon can join the programme by paying a certain fee. On completion of the course, the participants will have to appear for online exams. The ones who clear it will be awarded certificates and credit hours, said Gupta.

Last month Buzz4health along with Dr Poonam Malhotra, Professor, Anaesthesia, CNC AIIMS Delhi, has launched a unique fellowship programme in Cardiac Critical Care on its digital platform. The fellowship programme has received good response from medicos. So far more than 200 cardiac specialists have enrolled for the programme. Besides Dr Malhotra, a faculty of 10 doctors from Medanta, AIIMS, Max Hospitals, UK based University of Birmingham conduct the fellowship course on Buzz4health's digital platform.

The two fellowship programmes are licensed by Simulation Society of India.

“Since inception, we are getting overwhelming response from medical professionals. Currently, 1.5 lakh doctors from more than 20 countries including UAE, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan in Middle East, Singapore, Japan in South East Asia have benefited from our CME programme. We have two modules of CME, one is mobile app based fellowship programme and another is taking workshops and conferences to mobile phones wherein doctors can access to presentations and medical cases discussed during such conferences through their mobile phones without going there in person,” he said.

“Our CME modules, also contain medical cases, help medicos keep updated about latest development in their field. They can access CME content including medical case studies on their iphone, android mobile phones. We have content collaboration with doctors from AIIMS, Medanta Hospital, Max Hospital. We have raised USD 300,000 and initiated steps to raise more money to expand our CME programme. We are all set to register 5 lakhs doctors on our network by the end of this year,” he said.

“Apart from orthopaedics and critical cardiac care fellowship programmes, we are planning to come up with user friendly 3D contents in other medical specialties like dermatology, oncology, radiology, dentistry. Our goal is to enable doctors in tier II & III cities lagging in technology and infrastructure access to be at par with their counterparts in metros and tier I cities through our mobile based CME in several medical super specialty segments”, he opined.

So far 3500 clinical cases are on our digital platform and we are generating 10-20 cases daily. Our CME content contains videos of super specialty doctors' lectures in their field of specialisation helping doctors and medical students enhance their skills and get update on latest developments in their respective field. We are complementing the classroom medical courses. We have strengthened verification protocol to verify doctors before allowing them to access our CME programmes.

Medicos from 11 countries including India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, UAE, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Laos etc access our CME courses. We are marketplace for content of super specialty doctors who have 30-40 years' experience. They can share contents based on their expertise to 1.5 lakh doctors through our digital platform, Gupta concluded.