I manage the education for an association that has 180 courses, 35 symposia presentations, 510 paper presentations, more than 500 poster exhibits, and 80 scientific exhibits. As you can imagine, this adds up to thousands of authors, presenters, and co-authors.

We recently automated all of our forms. The participant now gets an e-mail with a link. The link takes him to a site where he logs in (username and password). It will automatically bring up a list of his events, and when he clicks on an event it brings up three forms (Mandatory Financial Disclosure, FDA disclosure, and an AV order form). He can input new information or update old information. Paper and poster presenters are also given the opportunity to update their 20-word summary sentence and their abstract.

When we are done, we take the link down, and the info from the completed forms becomes a word document for publication in our final program. For papers and posters, the updated sentence and abstract becomes the Proceedings Book.

Kathie Niesen, CMP
Education Manager
Convention and Meeting Services
American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons
Rosemont, Ill.
niesen@aaos.org

If you have developed successful initiatives for implementing the updated Standards for Commercial Support or other aspects of CME, please contact Editor Tamar Hosansky at (978) 466-6358, or send e-mail to thosansky@primediabusiness.com.