Videoconferencing Van Brings Distance Learning to CEE

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In the fall of 1997, one of the first mobile videoconferencing units operating worldwide began travelling across Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary as part of a groundbreaking collaboration between AIHA and VideoBridge International Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The van, which has made regular videoconferencing available for the first time in Czech Republic and Slovakia, enables partners to conduct seminars, "case study" workshops, research collaboration sessions and regular partnership planning meetings, not only with colleagues in the US but within CEE as well.

Several health management education partnerships have used the equipment to continue their work long after the partnerships' graduation. The Bohemia, Czech Republic-Reno, Nevada partnership, for example, has hosted videoconferences on strategic planning for management faculties and the impact of diagnosis-related groups on medical practice and education.

"The benefit of this technology for us is that we can continue the work we started," said Mary Paterson, PhD, Bohemia-Nevada coordinator and director, Office of Health Care Policy Research, University of Nevada School of Medicine. "It means that we can continue joint curriculum planning as well as discuss new developments in health care reform. We are also planning to videotape some conferences for later use in the classroom."

Partners from Kosice, Slovakia and Providence, Rhode Island, have also used the equipment to initiate a transatlantic discussion on the applications of evidence-based medicine in neonatal care.

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