First-year medical students in Windsor can fully participate in medical classes with fellow students and teachers at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in London, thanks to high-definition videoconferencing technology and dedicated high-speed optical network links facilitated by ORION, London's regional network, LARG*net, and Windsor's regional network, WEDnet.

The Schulich School at the University of Western Ontario, in collaboration with the University of Windsor, launched a Windsor-based arm of its medical program last fall, able to accommodate 24 inaugural medical students in its first year.

The project is part of the provincial government's plan to create more openings for medical students in order to address the physician shortage in Ontario. It is hoped that at least half of these students, upon graduation, will stay in the Windsor-Essex community where the doctor shortage is a serious concern.

The program is expected to grow to 96 students - 24 in each of the four years - by 2011. However, the province recently announced that Windsor's current 24 positions may be boosted by a further 14 spots next year.

A newly-built, state-of-the-art Medical Education Building - built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold standards, which boasts a living wall that cleans the air - has just opened on the University of Windsor campus to house the program.

Able to accommodate up to 200 medical students, the facility has two 50-seat lecture rooms equipped with high-definition videoconferencing (VC) technology, and a virtual anatomy lab where the students will study and manipulate three-dimensional anatomical images using a computer.

"This is as good as it gets in North America in terms of facilities available for medical education," says Dr. Carol Herbert, Dean of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

In addition, a classroom at the Schulich School in London was also extensively renovated and refurbished to accommodate the fully interactive videoconferencing of lectures between the campuses.

Web-based online learning, as well as small group learning at both sites, complements the VC lectures for the Windsor and London students.

The speed and reliability of ORION has enabled fully-functional high-definition VC with push-to-talk individual microphone setups in each of the London and Windsor teaching rooms. As one student says, "you can basically talk to a fellow student every day of the year and never actually meet them."

ORION collaborated with LARG*net (the London region's advanced regional and community network) and WEDnet (the Windsor-Essex community's advanced regional network) to establish dedicated high-capacity videoconference links between the University of Western Ontario, the University of Windsor, and the London and Windsor teaching hospitals, using a Layer 2 connection that runs on ORION between London and Windsor.

"LARG*net provides the role of facilitator and solutions provider for our members," says Debbie Jones, Executive Director, LARG*net. "For this important project, partnering with ORION offered the speed and reliability that was a key factor for success."

So far, the reliability of ORION has ensured the school's ability to teach interactively for three to four hours a day without interruption - something that would have been much less likely with "traditional" VC using internet, ISDN and bridge connectivity, according to Dr. Peter Flanagan, Director of Faculty E-Learning at Schulich.

"Our use of ORION has made the vision of highly-interactive distributed medical education in Southern Ontario a reality," says Dr. Flanagan. "As a result, we are very hopeful that the training of a larger number of medical students in Windsor and London will go some way to address the physician shortage in this part of Ontario."

"This is an exciting new chapter in the 127-year history of Western's medical school, one that illustrates how we can, and must, adapt to meet the health care needs of our communities," said Dr. Herbert. "The Windsor Program is built upon the strength of our relationships with the University of Windsor and Windsor hospitals."

For more information, visit www.uwindsor.ca/medicine.