Distant educational technologies in urology: perspectives and development trends. Experience of the institute of urology

The appearence of new technologies in diagnosis and treatment of the diseases, new medications warrants the constant improvement of the professional knowledge of the specialists. As for April 2013, 62% of the physicians use Internet to approach the professional information. We have estimated, that more than half of the urologists have a desire and need to access the Internet resources for self-education purposes. Given the big size of Russian Federation this could be realized using the distant education technologies and modern Internet-based platforms. In the Russian Scientific Institute of Urology we have a unique experience of the organization of the educational courses using the distant educational technologies. In 2011 a project UroEdu.ru (http://www.uroedu.ru) was created, which could provide free of charge every urologist with the necessary educational courses. During the years 2012 and 2013 we have conducted 12 educational distant courses with the use of the distant educational technologies, which consisted of 157 lectures, delivered by 67 tutors from 15 institutions. The faculty consisted of 17 professors, 19 doctors of science, 21 candidates of medical sciences. Overall the number of the participating fellows was 1798 (98% of them were urologists). The number of the fellows who fulfilled the courses was 573. The fullvalue use of the educational capacities obligates the prompt development of the legal regulations for the use of the distant educational technologies.