The ANZCVS and Radincon have a long history of working together. We caught up with the current ANZCVS CEO Stephen Alderman to hear their perspective on the relationship.
Let’s Start With Some Background On The ANZCVS
The Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists is a certifying body. We prepare and administer examinations in many areas of advanced veterinary practice. That could be focusing on a specific animal, such as equine vets, or it could be a discipline like radiology.
While any vet can join the AVA, to become a member of the ANZCVS, you have to pass the relevant examinations. That gives you the right to become a member and use the postnominals after your name. Their expertise means our members are often found in referral centres for general vet practices in their geographic area. So deep knowledge and experience is available when needed.
In Australia and New Zealand we have one organisation which manages advanced certifications across all veterinary subjects. Globally, we’re unusual – most countries have institutions which focus on a particular discipline or subject area. We get a lot of overseas vets taking our certifications, and they make up 10-20% of our membership.
As for me, I joined the ANZCVS two weeks before COVID. It was terrible timing. Almost the first thing I had to do was to shut down the Vet Science Week conference and all examinations for the year, something that had not happened since the College was founded in 1971.
We all knew it was time to implementing a digital business model. I just don’t think any of us were planning to do it quite so quickly!
How Did COVID Change The ANZCVS?
The main work of the ANZCVS is setting and administering examinations. A typical examination includes two written papers and an oral examination. There are also practical examinations – so for example radiology candidates have to review radiology studies and report on their findings.
Before COVID, all the examinations were held at Science Week every year. You had to fly in to sit them in person. We’d have 250-300 candidates, plus another 140 or so examiners, all flying into the Gold Coast at that same time. The written examinations were all paper-based; orals were face-to-face. We also needed specific equipment and so on for practical examinations. Radincon has been involved since at least 2017, providing DICOM viewers for all the radiology candidates. We’d know how many candidates we had with a radiology practical, so we’d work out how many viewers we needed. Right from the start, Radincon has been able to provide whatever number of viewers we requested, and has shipped them to and from the Gold Coast at their own expense.
Then, with COVID, we couldn’t have everyone at the Gold Coast. People couldn’t leave their states.
The easiest part was moving oral examinations online. The technology was straightforward and there was no issue with integrity since two examiners and an invigilator were on every call. But for integrity reasons, we still needed to supervise written and practical examinations. So we set up different examination centres for each state. That meant more equipment, more logistics and more shipping cost, but Radincon stepped up and supported us through those very difficult years.
What Are The ANZCVS Plans For The Future?
COVID forced us to digitise quickly, and to decentralise. We’ve moved away from the idea that everyone has to come to the Gold Coast. The long-term plan is to have remote proctoring. We’re testing that this year, but we’re not relying on it just yet.
In the meantime, we’ll have locations in the individual states of Australia. It’s less distance to travel, and also easier if you’re juggling a busy life, not just at your practice but also with family and personal commitments.
For our overseas candidates, they have an opportunity to nominate an invigilator. Clearly, we have to approve that person, but then they can take the examination locally. We’ve got someone in Mumbai, India this year.
Changing The Way Radincon Supports Practical Examinations
For practical exams, we’re implementing the Radincon RocketPACS solution for the first time this year. It will be much easier logistically. Instead of shipping equipment around the country, all we need is connection to the internet and licences to use the software. Nor will there be hours spent loading images onto all the viewers. We just upload them once to the cloud and they’re available anywhere.
Candidates bring their own device and log onto our locked down examination platform. There will also be a second device available to log on to RocketPACS. (To avoid any disputes or concerns around image quality, we’ve worked with Radincon to identify the minimum display requirements.) There’s no need to annotate into RocketPACS – candidates can easily view studies across all modalities and access a rich set of DICOM Viewer tools provided on the RocketPACS platform to answer the examination questions. They enter all the answers on their own device.
RocketPACS is intuitive and many practices use it already, so some candidates may have experience with it already. We have created RocketPACS walk-through videos for all the candidates. Online familiarisation sessions are also offered for anyone that would like one. The Radincon support team has also offered to assist our examiners and candidates if they require in-depth knowledge of any particular feature.
One candidate from Singapore is sitting a radiology examination. In the past, that would have meant flying into the Gold Coast, or during COVID we could have shipped equipment internationally. Now all we need to do is provide access to a device with a modern web browser, a high-quality screen in Singapore and test the internet speed.
In 2023, we’re using RocketPACS for radiology only. We’re not expecting any issues, but limiting the number of candidates this first year makes sense. We have discussed that in the future we might extend usage to other subjects. We may also find some chapters which haven’t traditionally run a practical examination consider it now that the logistics are easier.
We’re grateful to Radincon for all the support we’ve received over the years. There are plenty of free online DICOM viewers, but we’re running professional examinations. We need something commercial grade, with commercial quality support so that if something happens we can get help straight away. That would be really hard to get elsewhere, but Radincon have always been there for us.
It’s all about the professionalism of the exams. Radincon have made it so easy and always at no charge. When I think about how much it must have cost over the years, I want to express the gratitude of everyone at ANZCVS.