ISUOG 2005
I just returned from ISUOG 2005 in Vancouver. For those of you who don't know ISUOG is an international ultrasound conference.
I thought that I was going to make it to some of the lectures but I spent most of my time meeting with various vendors and discussing their education needs.
There is a lot of interest among all of the companies regarding education right now.
The graph below shows why this is becoming such an issue. The purple line on the graph below represents the Average Sonographer's Ability plotted over time. It shows a steady and consistent improvement. But the blue line represents the rate of technological advancements in ultrasound. We can see that the rate of ability is not accelerating at the same rate as the technology.
This is the result of major advancements in ultrasound technologies but little innovation in regards to how customers are taught. Think about it? Is there much done in customer education today that wasn't possible 30 years ago? The answer is no.
The good news is that this is starting to change. I spoke to several respected Doctors who said that the multimedia training they had received had been very beneficial in helping them understand their ultrasound system. Many more were interested in getting that training for their system. Better yet, many of the manufacturers are beginning to realize that this is an issue and are ready to take significant steps to improve the education resources that are available.
We hope to be able to create a common platform for ultrasound education where we can take the advancements made by leaders in the ultrasound field and present them in a way that makes it possible for doctors and sonographers of all abilities to implement them.
I left ISUOG with the feeling that most participants were going to leave the conference feeling overwhelmed by how much they weren't able to do. Hopefully in future years we will be able to change this. We want to create an learning process where users can leave these conferences feeling empowered to implement a significant portion of what they have learned.