Who doesn’t fantasize about virtual worlds? Whatever your particular attraction, be it for gaming, escape, engineering or other more nefarious designs, they sound cool. And now they are even clinically useful. Finally, the medical fraternity has jumped aboard and they got this one right.
Specifically, Prof. Ron M Walls (Harvard Medical School), Prof. Michael F Murphy (University of Alberta) and Prof. Robert C Luten (University of Florida), who developed the Difficult Airway Site, got this right. Airway World is run by the Airway Management Education Center, LLC (AMEC – an educational company owned by Walls, Murphy and Luten) and describes itself as the “only on-line knowledge and collaboration centre dedicated to Airway Management.”
Airway World is not unlike the ICN or others such as EM Crit or PHARM in concept, but it is visually quite intriguing and there are a few differences and possible catches explained below. It’s kind of EM Crit meets EM:RAP meets TED. Registration is free and once you are in you can tailor your profile easily to categories such as Emergency Medicine, Critical Care, EMS and others. Then you can access documents, articles, podcasts and live webinars. You are notified by email of live events so that you can attend virtually and pose questions to speakers. The registration trade-off outlined in the Terms and Conditions states that information collected on visitors includes demographics and contact details used to tailor a visitors experience, but also admits that information may be passed on to marketing groups. And there is a whole section devoted to industry sponsors, just like there would be at a real world conference. We’ve signed up and we’ll let you know how this pans out. However, the ‘price’ might be worth it. For instance, at the end of this week, Airway World is hosting a live presentation on “CPAP Preoxygenation and Delayed Sequence Intubation” by none other than EM Crit’s Dr. Scott Weingart (Thursday 5pm US eastern coast time, Friday 8am Australian eastern coast time). The schedule of events as of June 2012 is attached below. Airway World restricts itself to airway issues, but who knows, maybe the concept will catch on and there’ll be a Haemodynamic World or a Procedure World. Maybe it will be you that creates it. See you out there. |
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