26 April,2011 07:10 AM IST | | Priyanka Vora
Four major medical institutions in the city have defunct websites, which aren't updated regularly and provide misleading information to students
Even as doctors boast of using newer technologies to treat patients, the colleges where they earned their degrees seem to be locked in the remote past. This is at least the case when it comes to the four major medical colleges in the cityu00a0-- Grant Medical College (GMC), Seth GS Medical College (KEM), LTMG Medical College (Sion Hospital) and TN Medical College (BYL Nair Charitable Hospital), all of which have defunct websites.
Oops! Dr Rajan Palav, who succumbed to dengue on August 24 last year,
is still represented as a faculty member in the ENT department webpage.
Faculty members who are long gone are still shown as faculty members, while teachers appointed recently are yet to make their presences felt on the respective websites of all four medical colleges.u00a0The Medical Council of India (MCI) has recommended that each medical college update its website, stating that it takes into account the degree of sophistication of the website while evaluating and ranking the colleges.
Topsy-turvy
The GMC website is a case in point. Dr Rajan Palav, who succumbed to dengue on August 24 last year, is still represented as a faculty member in the ENT department webpage. On the other hand, the newly established and now thriving nephrology department has a dead link on the website.
Doppelganger?
Going by the information provided on the website, Dr Sadiq Patel has mastered the fine art of being in two places at one time.u00a0 The vice-dean of the hospital for postgraduate courses, whose name is posted as doctor of surgery on the main page, also makes an uncanny appearance as the head of the department of pharmacology on the same website. In the real world, however, Dr Patel is only a professor of pharmacology.
Apparitions
Matters become even more spectral in the official websites of the BMC run medical colleges, namely KEM, Nair and Sion. These websites have ghost doctors on their websites. KEM Hospital's forensic department webpage, for instance, represents Dr Rajeev Choudhary as head of the department, irrespective of the fact that the present head is Dr Walter Waz. Past and present seem to merge miraculously in the virtual world, as Dr Waz's name is listed on the Nair Hospital website, where he worked much earlier.
Invisible
These slip-ups don't just end here. A few doctors, who have been transferred from one college to another recently, are missing altogether from all the websites. Take for instance, the case of Dr Ambresh Baliarsingh, currently the head at Nair Hospital's plastic surgery department, transferred from KEM Hospital. His name and details are nowhere to be found in either of the two websites.
Creative exercise
The hospitals get more and more creative when it comes to kinds of lacunae in the information provided in these websites. KEM Hospital's website lists the names of some doctors as part of the teaching faculty, even though they have left the institute to join other private set ups. Sion Hospital appears to be on technological overdrive, having not one, but two official websites simultaneously.
The old website was last updated in the year 1996, and still displays the names of the doctors who headed different departments way back in the last decade of the twentieth century. Just two months back, the hospital appeared to have a sudden epiphany, and launched a new website. The webpages of the major departments, however, are still under construction. Moreover, the new website violates norms by accommodating a side bar of links to different websites which advertise different firms.
The Other Side
Admitting that their official website is not updated, Dr Ravi Rannavre, Dean of Nair Hospital, said, "We update our website every three months. However, individual departments do not send in the inputs on time, as a result of which we cannot make timely updates." Dr Rannavre added, "We too want an updated website, so that aspiring medical students can learn about the faculty and facilities offered by the college."
Dr Sandhya Kamath, Dean of Sion Hospital said, "The new website was just launched two months back, and we are in the process of updating it. I will have the older website removed immediately." Meanwhile Dr Sanjay Oak, Dean of KEM Hospital, said, "Since we are not privately funded, there is always a paucity of funds. Hence we find it difficult to update our websites on a daily basis. A website is merely a portal of information, and having an updated website is not that important."
Dr T P Lahane, Dean of GMC, said, "I am aware that Dr Rajan Palava's name is still on the website, and we have intimated the company responsible for the website's maintenance. We have decided to stop the outsourcing work for the website and instead appoint an in-house team to update the website."
