**6.2 Hurdles on the road to innovation**

The paradigm shift to virtual learning brought many impediments. The world was not ready for this unprecedented intervention in medical education. Various studies conducted globally identified numerous challenges [6, 42–46] as depicted in **Table 1**. These are particularly exaggerated in developing countries, where barriers including lack of infrastructure, technological resources, financial constraints and

**Figure 1.** *E-resources used for medical education during COVID-19 pandemic [34].*


**Table 1.**

*Challenges of technology enhanced medical education (TEME) in COVID pandemic [6, 47–49].*

a fragile health care system imposed friction towards smooth transition to a digital system for medical education [7].

#### *6.2.1 Challenges faced by medical teachers and staff*

Developing online lectures is more time consuming as compared to face-to-face sessions. Faculty with limited or a complete lack of digital-learning skills, faced immense stress during this rapid transition phase [45, 50].

In their struggle to adapt to the new system, most of the medical faculty overlooked the fact that virtual learning material is different from face-to-face sessions. In the

absence of well-established guidelines and standardization procedure for e-learning, the outcome was dubious [47].
