Virtual Community Unites Ukrainian Eye Specialists

Online resources can provide education and information about medical issues, even in incredibly challenging times such as war, according to Oksana Vitovska MD, PhD. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, many Ukrainian doctors have fled to other regions, and many clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies were destroyed or closed. Consequently, the opportunities to further professional development decreased abruptly.

“The increase of medical information and knowledge with a decreasing amount of time to cover it is a great challenge, so we are looking for a new approach to our medical education,” Professor Vitovska said. “One of them is microlearning.”

Microlearning is a set of e-learning modules divided into topics or objectives, easily accessible to users, that do not take much time. To support and help Ukrainian ophthalmologists, an educational platform named Dr Ophtik has been created with the support of the Ophthalmology Foundation and the Ukrainian Alliance of Ophthalmologists.

The aim of Dr Ophtik is to unite Ukrainian ophthalmologists in one virtual place without any commercial brand where they can access 24/7 scientific communication, tools, and learning. The platform is open to ophthalmologists, optometrists, and ophthalmology fellows and has a chatbot with many functionalities, such as news flow, education, clinical cases, entertainment, surveys, discussions, and libraries.

“You can access it through your phone, and you can learn anything when you have some free time,” she said, adding the platform is extremely user friendly.

The learning process consists of a system of testing divided into different topics, where the user can solve subclinical cases, quizzes, or follow lessons. Users can revisit failed tests anytime, and a scoring system rates those most active. The library functionality provides publications translated into Ukrainian with a link to the original text. According to Prof Vitovska, one of the key tasks is to create Ukrainian professional medical resources and help those ophthalmologists who cannot easily read English.

With Dr Ophtik, ophthalmologists can submit difficult cases to experts—providing photos, videos, or text—and have an answer within two days. This is particularly important in a war zone, where such cases are frequent. Finally, one of the most appreciated functionalities is the common chat, where ophthalmologists can discuss any topic, even humorous ones. “We want to have a community that can stay in touch as human beings,” Prof Vitovska remarked.

The platform now accounts for more than 70% of all Ukrainian ophthalmologists, adding to the immensely popular Ukrainian Alliance of Ophthalmologists YouTube channel. A favourite among specialists, the channel hosts more than 6,000 subscribers and 300 video lectures and webinars. For example, a webinar concerning cataract surgery resulted in 5 meetings and more than 20,000 views.

But of course, the best is yet to come, with many improvements expected for the future. “We are looking for further cooperation with other ophthalmological societies in providing a model for education to all our colleagues,” she concluded.

Prof Vitovska presented at the 2024 ESCRS Congress in Barcelona.

Oksana Vitovska MD, PhD is Professor of Ophthalmology at the Bogomolets National Medical University, Kyiv, Ukraine. She can be reached at vo.visiondep@gmail.com. The link of the YouTube channel mentioned in the article is https://www.youtube.com/@ophthalmolog/streams.