The LION Foundation was created in 2006 as a nonprofit organization. It is dedicated to promote medical and surgical high quality continuing education programs. LION was envisaged in order to improve the knowledge, skills and discipline of current otolaryngologists while introducing innovative programs designed to provide worldwide education including developing countries. The goals of the LION are to stimulate, foster, and provide surgical procedures in Oto-Rhino-Laryngology with a special focus in otologic, neuro-otologic and skull base surgery. LION's aims are to facilitate distance live surgery using modern learning videoconferencing technologies and to teach high quality surgical procedures and medical care internationally.
The LION is a training in-country project conducted with international partners. It will include multiple annual scientific events and interactive training sessions. It will provide an ENT telemedicine linkage within a world spanning network. Such project can provide a focus for training as well as an enhanced professional experience. Because of the cost of travel and the limited time available, maximizing the use of telemedicine should considerably enhance training, education and service provision programs. Such multicenter sessions may emulate the advantages of international meetings by allowing international exchanges of ideas and experiences. Surgical subspecialities in which images play an important role are particularly amenable to videoconferencing sessions which can include multiple participants or institutions.
The simultaneous connection of multiple international participants promotes continous exchanges of ideas and the sharing of experience among many centers and institutions. The concept of a global network is greatly enhanced by a constantly accessible highly interactive videoconferencing system. This allows real time, high quality, image and sound transmission which can only be provided in one of the videoconference rooms available worldwide.