[On line ophthalmologic education. Live transfers and on demand lectures via Internet]

Continuing medical education for ophthalmologist is important and demanded from the board of ophthalmic organizations. The use of new multimedia possibilities provided by the internet, offers an alternative to acquire the training sessions requested by the board. Aim of the paper is to show the efforts made, to place an internet-based training website for ophthalmologists by transferring live ophthalmology events via the internet. The live-transfers of selected lectures is realized by transferring the original sound compatible to the software "Real-Audio-Player" with an rate of 8000 Hz (encoding-depth 14 bits). By using this software it is possible to follow the lectures live. It includes also 2 live-pictures of 2 digital camcorders to show the appropriate slides from the lecturer. The live broadcasted lectures were afterwards revised and are available at any time as "on-demand lectures" with original sound and slides. Since November 1997, 15 continuing medical education events for ophthalmologists of the University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany and from other universities were live broadcasted covering all aspects of phthalmology can be viewed as "on-demand lectures" with original-sound and slides under the internet-addresse http:¿www.onjoph.com/deutsch/live.html. The broadcasted events of workshops were watched via the internet with the appropriate software by 3500 persons, and approximately 5200 persons were listening at least one of the lectures since 1997.