Continuing Medical Education: Coupling Innovative Web Technologies to
Enhance and Extend Your Educational Mission
Christopher N.
Finneran, Christopher A. Fish, Pinky Davis* and Timothy J. Cain
2md :: Medical
Multimedia Design, *Center for Continuing Medical Education, College of
Medicine & Public Health, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
ABSTRACT:
Innovation has been the watchword at the Ohio State University (OSU) Center for Continuing Medical Education (CCME) for more than 40 years and as the times and the Center's audience has grown far more technologically sophisticated, so have the Center's offerings. The use of innovative technologies to offer real-time, interactive learning opportunities to healthcare professionals began in earnest at the OSU Medical Center during the mid-1960s. In the intervening decades, the CCME developed and delivered educational programming via radio broadcasts, teleconferencing, and live satellite television. The technologies employed during these early days were simple, but effective. The introduction of satellite television permitted the delivery of live, interactive programming in which case-based presentations were often enhanced with video vignettes from the exam room, operating room, catheterization lab, and other locations. While educationally effective, the ambitious production schedule was resource-intensive.
More recently, OSU introduced web-delivered programming to its participating hospitals and individual subscribers throughout the state of Ohio. We now offer live and on-demand streaming video and slide presentations to over 50 subscribing institutions. Using a suite of Macromedia Cold Fusion / MS SQL custom-authored tools, we have coupled our digital educational programming with online tools that enable our learners to earn, track, and manage a full range of CME activities. Specifically, these custom-built online tools enable our CME participants to complete program post tests and evaluations, register and pay for conferences, assess their post test performance (pass-fail), generate certificates of completion and track their CME activities and earned credits. Serving programmatic needs, our tool suite allows Center administrators to track and document participant activities and credits, compile, sort, and mine participant information and statistics as required for CME accreditation purposes. We will present an overview of the developmental strategies that we employed to create a single point resource for CME content delivery and management.
BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS
ATTENDING SESSION:
The techniques and deployment strategies that were used to create this single point resource for delivering CME may be of general interest. Participants interested in the following should plan to attend: (1) Using streaming technologies to deliver live Webcasts and archived videos on demand. (2) Applying database middleware solutions (i.e., Cold Fusion/SQL) to build and manage user accounts, information and CME tracking. (3) Coupling user tracking tools with encrypted credit card transaction processing
Christopher Finneran
2md :: Medical Multimedia Design
College of Medicine & Public Health
The Ohio State University
3187 Graves Hall, 333 W 10th Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: 614.292.4125
Fax: 614.292.7659
Email: mailto:cfinneran@2md.osu.edu
Website: http://ccme.osu.edu
CO-AUTHORS:
Christopher Fish, Timothy Cain
2md :: Medical Multimedia Design
College of Medicine & Public Health
The Ohio State University
3187 Graves Hall, 333 W 10th Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: 614.292.4125
Fax: 614.292.7659