TCS partners with Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is partnering with the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland to deploy iON cloud solutions to create an online community of doctors. The new tool called The Physician Network is a resource based on the TCS iON Digital Learning Platform to enable virtual 'common-interest communities' and facilitate best practice knowledge-sharing.

V Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON said that doctors will be able to collaborate from any location around the world, using the mobile-optimised solution to share insights and learnings with other medical professionals.

He added that the aim was to get the right set of professionals to have the largest community of doctors online. "We started engaging with Royal College of Physicians in Ireland to redefine the way education is being done. One was looking at how do you break barriers of brick and mortar and go across to educate students. The most covered Membership Royal College of Physicians of Ireland which had been in paper-pencil model, we have moved them digitally. Another area was to leverage our platform to offer community-based professional learning," he said.

TCS iON is a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services focused on manufacturing industries, educational institutions and exam boards. They provide technology by means of a unique IT-as-a-service model, offering end-to-end business solutions for the sector.

In the space of education, TCS iON offers solutions like digital examinations, digital assessment, digital campus, digital records, digital marking among others. Ramaswamy said that with respect to the partnership, the intent is to remove the boundary of the campus and make it available to large set of students outside the campus. He explained that they wanted to create a professional learning community with doctors and specialists and give them access to resources and create content to benefit each other.

The TCS iON Digital Assessment platform is also being used to allow doctors in Ireland, India, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Malaysia to take the Membership Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (MRCPI) examinations. According to Ramaswamy, this enabled greater capacity in digital assessment, increasing the number of doctors who can sit RCPI examinations in international centres, and will also reduce the waiting time for exam results from 30 days to just seven days.

"We are in talks in number of international boards and universities for tie-ups," said Ramaswamy adding that education and manufacturing are one of the biggest segments of business for TCS iON.

Apart from this, they are also looking to play a greater part in vocational education where they offer digital learning and digital campuses. The government is currently focussing on the skilling mission to make youth employable.

"We are looking at how do we participate effectively in the Skill India programme, how do we bring various different professionals, learners and industry to get one in one platform to collaborate and leverage each other," he said.

For TCS iON, Ramaswamy said that open and Distance learning is a very large opportunity. Since it is a very paper intensive space, their aim is to transform it using digital technology.

TCS iON already has tie-ups with several Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management where they work to offer certificates in dematerialised formats (apart from physical certificate) which is digitally signed by the Comptroller of Examinations of that particular institution.

"These records are available on the cloud for any agency to verify instantly. This is being used for both managing past records and for new certificates that are being issued,"he said. The former UPA government had brought out a plan to have a repository for education certificates so that they can be accessed on a real-time basis and also could curb fake certificates. However, this is yet to be implemented in the country.