CNIE 2009 Ottawa - Day Two Keynote

Day Two of CNIE 2009 brought another full day of sessions and twittering. The day began with a keynote from Dr. Thierry Karsenti. A copy of his keynote will be available on his Web site. He talked about "ICT and Education - Information and Communications Technologies in Medical Education - The Major Challenges". Interesting method of presentation - most of the keynote was in French with English slides (and simultaneous translation) - a truly Canadian approach.

Dr. Karesnti identified four main challenges:

1. Preparing physicians for the changing behaviours of Internet savvy patients
2. Patients can readily interact with healthcare professionals without leaving home
3. To motivate physicians in training to use ICT to find information, learn, and develop
4. To change medical education practices

Patients are changing - now much more participative in their own healthcare and medical knowledge is no longer the perogative of health care experts. ICT needs to be seen as a way to get patients more engaged in their health care not as a nuisance - this creates serious challenges to the way initial and continuing medical education is done.

Telemedicine is becoming increasingly common, as are digital patient files and the increased use of handheld and other mobile devices. There is a need to raise the awareness of the benefits of ICT to physicians in training - ICT training should be manadatory in initial and continuing medical training (in any professional training for that matter).

Virtual communities and blogs are on the increase in medicine - Ask Dr.Wiki for example - that are directly targeting medical students and practitioners.

To better prepare physicians to deal with patients who may be better informed of their condition than the physician, ICT training needs to be compulsory inmedical education.

An interesting keynote that while not only pointing out the need for ICT training and skills in modern medicine, made the point that these skills and knowledge are pretty much required universally in all walks of life. A great start to the day...