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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Friday urged the University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) to leverage available technology to increase access to medical education in the country.

He said the technology offered better ways through which medical students and all other students across the nation could be educated, and it was time to keep up with a technological change to prepare healthcare workers to deliver the digital future.

"Virtual reality in addition to other digital transformation products provides the space for the innovative ideas we need to adopt in the training of our medical students.

"It is time to deliberate on how best we can use technology to reach out to students across the country so that we do not have to bring all of them to Accra or the few medical schools we have in the country to impart knowledge to them,” he said when speaking at the 60th-anniversary lecture of the UGMS at Legon, near Accra.

The lecture was on the theme: “Building on 60 years of Quality Medical Education: The Role of Technology.”

The President noted that virtual reality was increasingly becoming popular in the training of medical professionals because it allowed for medical professional skills education, assessment, standardization and knowledge sharing for better health care infrastructure.

"The adoption of these technologies will require a fundamental rethink of how we deliver medical education…We need to take a second look at the curriculum of medical education in view of the digital revolution."

“I thus encourage the Ministries of Education and Health to work together to leverage on technology to increase access to the many students who hitherto, have been denied the opportunity to follow their passion of studying medicine because of insufficient facilities and faculty."

President Akufo-Addo also appealed to doctors to accept posting to the districts and regions to address the doctor-dentist population ratio challenge and to ensure universal health care for Ghanaians.

He described as unsatisfactory the current situation where the country did not have the right number of doctors, dentists and healthcare professionals with the right mix of skills and expertise in the regions, districts and deprived communities.

Thus, doctors in Ghana should follow the example of their forebears such as Doctors Charles Odamtten Easmon and Evans Anfom, among others who accepted postings to all parts of the country to offer their services to the deprived.

“They did so because they believed that the hypocritic oath they took imposed a duty on them to offer their services, especially, to the neediest…It was their work that helped build our national health system for which we are all benefitting.

"I am therefore appealing to you as passionately as I can, to accept postings to accredited regional and districts hospitals where your services are needed most," he said.

Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, the Coordinator of the National COVID-19 Taskforce, who delivered the anniversary lecture emphasised that medical training is needed to keep up with technology.

He said while it was hard to predict the future, technology, however, would have a significant impact on improving efficiency and precision in healthcare, and urged the UGMS to “reboot and revitalize” medical training by adopting technology that would enhance the training of doctors.