Medical Education Research Centre for Educational Technologies (MEdRC) is in dialogue with private equity (PE) players for a fund infusion of Rs.30 crore for its next phase of expansion. The company's novel e-Learning technology ‘SmarTeach’ referred to as a ‘digital approach to medical education’, recognized by the Medical Council of India (MCI), has been implemented in seven medical colleges in the country and will be executed in another 20 institutions this year.
Beginning this fiscal, it is also looking at introducing vocational skills certified courses for ECG assistants, lab assistants, patient assistant, physician assistant, healthcare coordinators and pharma sales executives.
“We plan to invest Rs.30 crore spanning a two-year period from April 2013 to March 2015. Going by the positive response for the ‘SmarTeach’, we have chalked out next phase to open up another three more centres at Delhi, Pune and Chennai from the existing ones at Hyderabad and Bengaluru. There will also be six more franchisee centres to be launched. This will allow us to access more medical colleges in the country. Further, MEdRC would also look to complete its 30 per cent of content development,” Guru Moorthy, director, MEdRC told Pharmabiz in an interaction.
The seven private medical colleges which have readily accepted ‘SmarTeach’ include KLE Belgaum, Vinayak Mission, Salem, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, and Hyderabad’s Osmania University, NMR Medical College. The company is now in dialogue with several state governments to recommend the same to institutions under its banner.
“The big advantage is the MCI and the Dental Council of India (DCI) endorsement which have directed all medical and dental colleges to equip themselves with SmarTeach to undertake the digital approach in modular teaching as part of the capacity building of doctors,” he added.
MCI specifically has recommended that the modular lessons in SmarTeach will need to incorporate Indian and regional-specific clinical case studies to provide the student with a realistic scenario of disease and diagnostic protocols in the country. Further, it has also approved the concept of e-learning as a supplement and all the MCI regional Medical Education Technologies (MET) could now be considered as nodal points to implement the programme, said Moorthy.
In the wake of a serious paucity of professors in medical colleges, MEdRC is aimed to bridge the gap by providing extensive self-learning modules. These are developed by a panel of eminent faculty from medical fraternity both from India and abroad. “Honing skills is core to medical education and it constitutes 50 per cent of the total teaching. This is where SmarTeach includes relevant text slides, labels, 2D, 3D animations and video simplifying complicated human anatomy structures to students,” he said.
Going by the increasing number of patients and hospitals, there is a major demand for paramedic, nursing and technicians. “This is where we have developed the short term vocational skills certified courses which are specialized sessions designed to provide on-the-job training along with a dedicated placement support. Now the tie-ups with well known healthcare institutes like V Skills and ICSIL help to meet the employment needs, said Moorthy.