Virtual Adaptation of an International Exchange Program in Medical Education.

Medical education has drastically transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Measures such as adopting telemedicine visits, minimizing the number of trainees on service, discontinuing external rotations, and converting in-person to online didactics have been broadly and swiftly implemented. While these innovations have promoted greater interconnectivity amongst institutions and made continuing medical education possible, international exchange programs in medical education are still largely disrupted. In response to the changing guidelines and restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors used Kern's six-step approach to design and implement a virtual curriculum to replace the in-person activities of the 2020-2021 Neurology Peru-Rochester exchange program (NeuroPro). Twenty-seven trainees participated in this virtual adaptation. The average daily attendance was ≥85% and the program was rated 9/10 on average in a feedback survey (63% response rate). The median percentage of correct answers during the pre-test was 64% and it increased to 79% during the post-test (P = 0.003). Virtual adaptation of international exchange programs in medical education is feasible to safely continue international collaborative efforts to promote symbiotic building of local expertise and cross-cultural exchange during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Impact of multi-lattice inner structures on FDM PLA 3D printed orthosis using Industry 4.0 concepts

The use of digital manufacturing for the construction of orthosis and prostheses has become common since the popularization of 3D printers and the advent of Industry 4.0. Furthermore, due to the fact that the manufacture of orthosis is interactive and for personal use, generic production is difficult. In this sense, the large-scale production of these products lacks of improvements, standardization of processes and production optimization. An aggravation of this is the recent social distance due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes the use of temporary orthosis made in 3D printers to have a recent growth. Parallel to this, the use of multi-lattice inner structures for internal structuring of prints has also been increasing and taking on a more consolidated form. This article aims to present the multi-lattice optimization as a solution to this problem, in order to reduce material waste while maintaining the mechanical behavior of printed parts.