East-West Partnership formed between MMC Worldwide and the Medical Broadcasting Corporation of Shanghai, China
New medical breakthroughs are now occurring on a daily basis; however, rare is the occasion that these significant scientific discoveries find their way to parts of the world where they are needed most – the examination rooms and surgical suites of the global healthcare community. It is widely believed that the amount of medical knowledge that exists in the world today will effectively double within the next five years, this as a result of the studies underway at the world’s top hospitals and universities – particularly in the areas of stem cell research and genomics. Consequently, it is incumbent upon doctors and other healthcare providers to stay current with the rapid transition that is taking place. But how?
Two organizations – one in the U.S. and one in China – have been attempting to address this critical issue for several years. Until recently, however, it was without the knowledge of each other’s existence. Each organization had built a private satellite broadcast TV network for the purpose of providing “point of access” to the advancements taking place in the field of medicine. Each had also built a repository of video-based medical education content to serve as the source for its daily television programming schedules. Each had used similar names for their broadcasting stations – in China, the station is called 24HMB, (which stands for 24 Hours Medical Broadcasting); in the U.S., the station is called the Medical Broadcasting Channel or MBC. 24HMB is owned and operated by the Medical Broadcasting Corporation of Shanghai, China, and MBC is a project of the non-profit organization, Medical Missions for Children.
In the spring of 2008, the leadership of these two like-minded organizations met in Paterson, NJ for the first time to discuss the possibility of a collaborative association. The outcome of this and subsequent discussions was the forming of an affiliation that would ensure that the medical staffs located at 750 hospitals throughout the entire of China, along with the medical staffs located at an additional 300,000 institutions in 90 different countries would be provided with the best educational information that these two organizations had to offer.
In October of 2008, in Shanghai, China, Medical Missions for Children Chairman, Mr. Frank Brady, and Mr. Hong Kang, Chairman of Medical Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), signed a partnership agreement that formalized the commitment on the part of each organization to deliver the most current and meaningful continuing medical education material available to their respective viewership. As part of this agreement, Medical Missions for Children offered its China partner access to the contents of digital video repository – the Global Video Library of Medicine (GVLM) – and in kind, MBC committed a portion of its financial resources to help fund and support the ongoing growth of the GVLM.
The relationship that was started by Medical Missions for Children has been parlayed to MMC Worldwide, resulting in the production of a series of “live” monthly broadcast events that will feature experts in the field of medicine (from both the East and West) to share their research findings and dialogue about the similarities and differences that exist between these two healthcare systems. The U.S. venue for this groundbreaking series will be the MMC-Panasonic HDTV Studios located at the global headquarters of MMC Worldwide and its favourite charity, Medical Missions for Children.
An additional element of the signed agreement calls for MMC Worldwide to represent the interests of the Medical Broadcasting Corporation in the U.S., and for the Medical Broadcasting Corporation to represent the interests of MMC Worldwide in China. In China, the Medical Broadcasting Corporation is the only privately held non-government broadcast network. Working closely with the Ministry of Health, the company has made considerable strides in advancing the level of medical knowledge and services throughout the entire of China.
