Streaming solutions are one of the most widely used tools for the provision of multimedia content on demand. More specifically, the use of Internet has allowed a more easy access to specific content in any area of knowledge, hence its importance in the field of eLearning. Nowadays, many learning activities are based on provision of multimedia content through virtual courses, so users/learners from remote locations can access this content and interact with the course coordinator.
In the field of eHealth, this kind of activities are becoming more and more relevant, and streaming of medical-related content is a useful sharing tool, not only for specialists recording tricky operations, but also for other health professionals to learn from the experience of their colleagues. Web pages such as www.lion-web.org are currently offering several scheduled operations of otolaryngology interventions, and the access is very user-friendly, so access is easy and prepared for different network connections.
Taking into account this opportunity, and the growing demand of such kind of solutions, the eHealth Area of Fundació i2Cat has developed a new service for e-Learning activities, which provides Internet access to visualization of real-time surgery interventions, with the possibility to communicate with the surgeon via chat or voice.
The principal functionalities of the platform are the following:
- The origin of the retransmission is a surgery room equipped with a High Definition or Standard Definition video capturing system for broadcasting.
- The system allows the broadcasting of the video stream feed coming from the capture system, through connection with a streaming server.
- Participants can connect to the broadcast transmission over the Internet through streaming web page, with different video quality depending on the capture system.
- Interactivity is achieved by both voice and chat, in order to allow communication among the participants.
