ESC, the non-profit association founded in 1950, based in Sophia-Antipolis, France, is dedicated to reducing cardiovascular disease through physician education. "European health care leaders have grappled for years with the variance in medical training and certification among cardiologists that occurs from nation to nation," said Eric Delente, co-owner of Enforme Interactive, one of the largest providers of web technologies for medical and scientific associations in the U.S. "Our assignment was to develop a learning platform that would respond to the complex and multi-faceted educational and certification needs of ESC's international membership - yet designed in a manner that would be highly user friendly."
Delente and his team responded with the development of the ESC eLearning Platform, (ESCeL) which debuted at ESC's annual congress in August, attended by approximately 28,000 health care professionals. The dynamic education portal provides for the training and certification needs across six cardiology subspecialties: acute cardiac care, echocardiography, heart failure, heart rhythm, percutaneous interventions, and prevention and rehabilitation.
ESCeL will provide cardiologists with the online coursework, study materials, and examinations required for international certification across Europe. The site will also allow physicians to demonstrate their practical clinical experiences and professional skills through online case logbooks and patient safety journals, another requirement for certification. These and other logged clinical experiences will then be reviewed and approved at the local, national and European levels using a sophisticated workflow approval management engine, developed by Enforme. The certification requirement is further enhanced with a journal of publications, research and teaching experience submitted by the ESC physician members that following certification can be shared with prospective employers as a standardized CV.
Delente said that two of the six cardio subspecialty groups are currently using the site with one or more groups expected to join in by year end. "There is a massive effort underway to add more content to the site. Currently, all the educational content is offered in English, but it will soon support the big five European languages and potentially, later, some languages in Asia and the Middle East."
Despite Enforme's long track record of creating highly sophisticated website portals for medical associations that can deliver highly structured education, be tracked, audited and provide a state-of-the-art user experience, Delente said the ESCel site was extremely challenging. "Because of the internationality and diversity of ESC's extensive membership which include numerous cardiac associations, the site required many special provisions. However we felt confident we nailed the site this summer based on the response we received from the hundreds of medical trainees, trainers and professionals we demonstrated it to at the ESC conference."
While the ESCel site is still new, Delente believes it has already established a precedent for the importance and need for greater uniformity of medical training among international nations. "It is an issue that medical associations must be debating based on the number of inquiries we've received since the portal was launched."
For further information, please visit:
http://learn.escardio.org