Two Years of CME FastTrack: More Than One Hundred Thousand Credits Transferred

Via the MedBiquitous Activity Report Standard

Stephen Kenney Ben Greenberg

American Osteopathic Association

• Represents D.O. Physicians

– 71,000 DOs in the United States

– 42,000 AOA members

• Major Areas of Focus

– Accreditation

– Advocacy

– Education

– Research

Medscape Education • A network of 32 leading specialty-focused sites for physicians and other

healthcare professionals

• A medical education company

• An accredited provider

• CME Usage: Over 6 million CME/CE certificates issued in 2010

• Membership:• 500,000+ Physicians

• 120,000+ NPs / PAs

• 500,000+ Nurses

• 100,000+ Pharmacists

Electronic CME The Old Way

Is that so wrong?

Manual Certificate Processing

• Can be handled 6 or 7 times before recorded• Looked up manually• Entered into database manually• Missing unique program numbers must be

sorted, assigned number manually, course master updated, tied to boards

• Prepare paper documents for imaging• Total effort estimated at $8 per certificate

The Business Case for Electronic Certificate Exchange

– Participant: • Eliminate time and effort spent with manual

submissions to professional organizations

– Professional Organizations: • Eliminate the costly manual data

entry of CME activity data• Improve accuracy by gathering data

from the CME source vs. the participant

– Platform Provider: • Improve user experience for medscape.org CME

participants• Increase operational efficiency by utilizing a single

standard

Electronic CMEThe New Way

Electronic CME The New Way

The Big Question:Was it worth it?

Return on Investment

• Site analytics show that the CME activity report is the most important feature members visit

• About half our members use Medscape• Total effort estimated at $8 per certificate• Over 115,000 Credits transferred• Over 84,000 Certificates• Over $650,000 saved in workforce time

Additional Benefits

• Convenience increases member satisfaction• Electronic certificate option increases overall

number than if only paper• Prepare paper documents for imaging• Approves all osteopathic postgraduate training

programs• Confers Specialty Board certification• Accredits osteopathic Continuing Medical

Education

Technical Details

Behind The Scenes

Activity Report XMLAn xml representation of a Participant’s Activity Certificate.

Participant Information{

ActivityInformation{

An xml representation of a Participant’s Activity Certificate.

Activity Report XML

CreditInformation{

An xml representation of a Participant’s Activity Certificate.

Activity Report XML

Considerations / Challenges Faced

• Method: SOAP vs. POST over HTTP

• Data / Concept Mapping

• User Mapping / Soft Matching

• Exception Handling / Logging

• Technical Staff Required for Implementation / Substantial Effort Footprint

Q & A

Contact Information

Ben Greenberg, Sr. Product Managerbgreenberg@webmd.net

Stephen Kenney, Director, Applications Developmentskenney@osteopathic.org

Appendix A – Activity Report XML