February 23, 2005
Case Study: Brainshark Delivers Required Medical Education
Text, voice, and slide presentations, combined with real-time content updates keep medical education healthy.
Every company faces the challenge of delivering personal, customizable communications -- whether in human resources, sales and marketing, or training and education. MDwebNews, which is a provider of medical education, needed an easy-to-use, savvy solution that would allow physicians the ability to access educational content while balancing extremely demanding careers and hectic schedules. Ultimately, we found a solution in a growing technology called On-demand Rich Media (ODRM) and specifically in Brainshark, which provides rich-media solutions.
Combining voice, images and text, ODRM leverages the reach and interactivity of the Internet to deliver a more powerful experience that increases the understanding and retention of information. It is more interactive than a simple PowerPoint presentation, and more cost- and time-efficient than Web or audio conferencing.
In August 2004, MDwebNews launched , a site which offers Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses to medical professionals. MDwebNews uses Brainshark's ODRM to deliver its content within the website. The benefits to MDwebNews and its viewers are numerous.
Benefits Accrue To Educators And Students
- Most doctors are required to obtain a certain number of CME credits to maintain their licenses to practice medicine. Before online CME courses were offered, most doctors had to take time out of their schedules to attend extra classes at universities or professional meetings. These courses were not only harder to fit into busy medical schedules, but they were also more costly because of travel expenses and lost income due to time away from business. Because the courses offered by CME.md can be accessed on demand, doctors can now view them when and as their schedules permit.
- ODRM has enabled MDwebNews to overcome typical challenges of delivering CME courses. For example, many CME courses are offered via live lectures, in books, or on CD-Roms. The challenge with a live lecture is that once it's over, it's really over, and the information is not reviewable. With books or CD-Roms, information is reviewable but the content is quickly outdated and irrelevant. With ODRM, the content is always current and dynamic, and is extremely easy to edit and instantly update.
- With Brainshark's Internet-based technology MDwebNews is able to easily coordinate with a network of presenting physicians who provide expert content for the courses. These experts record their voice narration to online medical presentations as easily as speaking into the telephone and using a web browser.
- Brainshark Guest Voice provide MDwebNews the ability to capture the physicians' lectures remotely, and places the power to create the content in the hands of those who hold the knowledge. Viewers appreciate the ability to access high quality medical education in an engaging and effective format, while receiving CME credits.
How It Works
To create a typical course, MDwebNews uploads a physician's slide presentation to the Brainshark application and sends a Guest Voice invitation to the physician via an email link. By clicking a link the physician is brought to a web page containing a phone number and access code. By calling the number and entering the code, his presentation appears in the browser window and he or she can begin to record their presentation by speaking into the telephone and using the phone's keypad to move from slide to slide. MDwebNews is automatically notified when the presenter has completed the presentation.
Overall, MDwebNews now does its job more efficiently. Our staff is able to accomplish more work in less time and can easily maintain lectures, record and create presentations, and deliver them to the intended audience. Brainshark also makes it efficient for presenters to re-record or update information, so lectures are kept up to date in a timely fashion. In addition, we've found Brainshark to be a very useful tool for tracking and reporting. All of this combines to make MDwebNews a more successful resource and choice for physicians.
For more information about Brainshark, visit , and for more information about MDwebNews, visit .
By Dr. Christopher Zachary is founder and president, MDwebNews, which operates several web sites that specialize in online medical education. The company provides education that is ethical, current, and freely available to all those training in the medical fields.
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