Virtual Reality Coming to Grand Rounds? (Orthopedics This Week)
Let’s say you are a fellow in hand surgery at, say, University of the Hand. Wouldn’t it be informative to know how an established thought leader from, say, Duke Orthopaedics would treat a specific case? Now that is possible through the Orthopaedic Education Initiative (OEI) on forMD.com. Greg Chang, MHA, was formerly associate director at Duke Orthopaedics and is currently cofounder and CEO of forMD. He tells OTW, “The idea for the Orthopaedic Education Initiative began when I was at Duke, and grew from discussions with and leadership from several orthopedic surgeons, including Jay Parvizi from the Rothman Institute and Scott Levin at the University of Pennsylvania. The objective is to allow individuals to connect to one another by subspecialty to share knowledge and learn from experts and colleagues. Our program, forMD.com, allows residents, fellows, faculty, and alumnae of residency programs to collaborate and learn from one another so as to accelerate the evolution of knowledge in the field.”
“At present we have 17 academic orthopedic groups that have volunteered to lead these discussions on a rotating basis and four programs have already done so: Duke, Rothman Institute, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Tulane University. More than 40 organizations have signed up thus far; the best news is that a full 20% of all U.S. orthopedic surgeons are already participating.”
“There are other orthopedic learning/connection sites on the internet, but our differentiating factor is that we allow orthopedic surgeons to connect through natural affinity groups they already belong to. The process is as follows: Each time an institution leads a discussion they select a topic that is considered, i.e., something that hasn’t been completely settled in the field and share it with the appropriate subspecialty, society, and/or residency alumni group. A deidentified case is reviewed, along with the appropriate imaging, etc. In the initial phase of the discussion, each surgeon provides treatment options, followed by feedback from the community. Then after a week or two of discussion the faculty member who is leading the discussion follows up with his or her input as to how they would treat them.”
For those concerned about site privacy issues, Chang notes, “This is an invitation-only site and the information held at the same level of security that you would find in any web-based EMR or HIPAA compliant platform. Additionally, we sign a contract with each institution verifying that we will not share their information with third parties to ensure the purity of the community and the privacy of all discussions.”
“This is a terrific opportunity to provide and access thought leadership on a larger scale, something that usually only happens at large medical conferences or visiting professorships. On a macro scale the goal is to connect the international orthopedic community to share best practices.”