HEC brings shoulder surgery live to classrooms
By Hina Kiyani

ISLAMABAD—tudents and faculty members in Pakistan witnessed live, arthroscopic shoulder surgery being conducted in USA through the video conferencing facility provided to them on Wednesday by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
Comments and discussion prior to the surgery were available with interactive participation from Columbia University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Hong Kong University, IIT New Delhi, University of Athens, McCormick Centre Chicago, and GDLN World Bank, Washington DC. A day earlier, in a landmark achievement, Higher Education Commission (HEC) successfully connected universities on Pakistan Education andResearch Network (PERN) for interactive video conferencing with 14 countries including major universities such as Johns Hopkins and University of Columbia.
By participation in the mega global ‘Conference on E-Health, Pakistanformally joined Internet2 (www.internet2.edu) a high speed network linking it to over 200 top research institutions of USA. It will directly facilitate researchers to gain access to high quality research material and even participate in collaborative experiments. The event which was available to nine universities and research centres in the country was being hosted from Pakistan with all MCU management andcoordination was done from HEC Secretariat Islamabad.
On December 5,’ Global Forum on Road Trauma’ became first ever event tobe telecast via video conferencing. It included live interactions by professors at the University of Toronto, World Bank, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, University of Vienna Medical School, PekingUniversity, Shanghai Jiaotong University, India Institute of Technology, New Delhi and McCormick Centre, Chicago. The lecture was available at HEC Video Conferencing Room, and HEJ Research Institute, Karachi, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, University of Engineering andTechnology Peshawar while University of Health Sciences, Quaid-e-AzamUniversity, King Edward Medical University and National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and students and faculty members interacted smoothly and extensively with professors across the world.
Prior to the international link-up, Dr. Sohail H. Naqvi, Executive Director in his welcoming remarks described HEC’s technological infrastructure programme.
PERN, he said includes computerization and networking of HEC while the same facility has been given to all public sector universities as well as extensive central computer laboratories. Dr. Naqvi revealed that the newest initiative HEC is working on is the provision of laptops tofaculty members and students, which will eventually lead to computing to the home.
Higher Education Commission’s video conferencing project has so far connected nine universities in Pakistan through IP based Video Conferencing System, so that students of such universities, who are not in a position to benefit from high profiled teachers, can avail theopportunity to learn from them, exchange their ideas, contribute and communicate their views in order to enhance their knowledge and capabilities. Universities and institutes of higher learning will be able to use video conferencing facility to carry out distance learning or include lecturers from other locations.