Author: Raihan ur Rashid, Secretary, IEEE Bangladesh Section.
IEEE Bangladesh Section has organized a virtual workshop titled “Bridge the Healthcare Gap: Introducing Telemedicine and IoT to Secondary Schools Students” on 20 December 2020 aiming to promote engineering education to pre-university students. One hundred students of class 11 and 12 from Engineering University Girls School and College, Dhaka, Bangladesh have actively participated in the program.
Prof Dr. Celia Shanaz, Chair, IEEE Bangladesh Section was the Chief Guest of the program. In her speech, the honorable chief guest focused on the importance of IEEE and its educational activities as well as the necessity and impact of engineering education in national development.
Jannatul Adan, Humanitarian Activities Coordinator for IEEE Women in Engineering Affinity Group (WIE) Bangladesh Section was the anchor of the program.
Prof. Dr. A. B. M. Aowlad Hossain, Educational Activity Coordinator of IEEE Bangladesh Section was the resource person to conduct the workshop. Firstly, Prof. Hossain has given a presentation on the overview of IEEE and its educational activities as well as the necessity of such a program. The available online resources of IEEE for pre-university education like TryEngineering, TryComputing, TryNano have been introduced to the participants even with native Bengali language. Then, he started the main topic on telemedicine and its benefits to improve healthcare. Then online demonstration on the telemedicine applications using IoT-based remote health monitoring systems, a relevant lesson plan from IEEE online resources, embedded systems like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and associated coding concepts have been taken place. The major focus was how telemedicine and telehealth technology can minimize the healthcare gap of rural areas or underprivileged peoples. Besides, the existing telemedicine services of Bangladesh have been introduced to show the current scenarios and future demands of technology and skilled personnel. It was an interesting session with proactive and enthusiastic interaction of the participants.
Most of the participants gave satisfactory feedback and suggested organizing more programs. The workshop ended with interactive discussion and photo sessions.