Educating General Practice Doctors In Cardiology Essentials
The Challenge
As a lower-middle income country with a growing middle class, Kenya’s disease burden is shifting to higher levels of heart disease. Yet the country has only about 60 cardiac specialists for a population of more than 50 million. To fill the gap in cardiologic care, general practice physicians and even clinical officers—an important cadre in Kenya—can be trained to diagnose, treat (and if necessary refer) patients with common heart conditions. These busy practitioners typically can spare neither the cash nor the time to undertake training that takes them away from their clinic.
TC4A Approach
To provide a self-paced eLearning course in medical management of heart failure, Care for All facilitated a partnership between Kenya Cardiac Society (KCS) and a top-ten global pharma company. Our flagship product, Medical Learning Hub, was ideally suited to host a multipart video course aimed at both cardiologists and general practitioners. Medical Learning Hub is an online platform that can manage all types of training, from self-paced eLearning to live video classes, as well as in-person hands-on training. The KCS online course, Pharmacological Management of Heart Failure, is taught by two renowned cardiologists, Prof. Elijah Ogola, University of Nairobi, and Dr. Anders Barasa, Copenhagen University Hospital and Aga Khan University Nairobi.
The Result
The engaging, conversational lessons by Professors Ogola and Barasa have enabled hundreds of healthcare providers to gain evidence-based, practical insights and knowledge to improve the quality of cardiac care they deliver, while earning CME credits from the Kenya Medical Board. Through innovative cost- and revenue-sharing agreements, Kenya Cardiac Society members can enroll for free. Courses offering CME credit are an incentive for doctors to join the Society, which has enjoyed increased revenue through the partnership. Tech Care for All has brokered a number of similar partnerships, empowering medical and surgical associations to offer benefits their members value.