Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center's Center for Continuing Medical Education today announced the launch of its innovative medical education game, The Cardio Country Club, on Cyberounds, the leading website for medical professional education. The Cardio Country Club features game-style interactive learning on cardiovascular medicine and was created with an educational grant from Pfizer Inc.

"Einstein is committed to helping physicians and other health care professionals stay abreast of the rapidly changing developments in clinical medicine," said Victor Hatcher, Ph.D., Associate Dean and Director of the Center of Continuing Medical Education. Medical professionals earn AMA Category I continuing medical education (CME) credits by answering questions about cardiovascular disease and responding to patients' clinical crises in an interactive golf game format.

The Cardio Country Club course is delivered via the Web, using the Cyberounds platform (www.cyberounds.com), a website developed by interMDnet to provide online medical information and services for medical professionals. "We see The Cardio Country Club as an exciting new way for doctors to learn important information of benefit to their patients," said Ross Martin, M.D., Senior Manager of Business Technology at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Group. "To be able to provide free CME in a way that's not only educational and challenging, but also entertaining, makes it even better," Martin added.

The content for The Cardio Country Club was created by Richard W. Smalling, M.D., Ph.D., Jay Brent Sterling Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and a regular Cyberounds contributor. "I'm so busy, and so is every doc I know, that my golf handicap is now 25," Smalling confided. "Cardio golf may be the best chance some of us have to close in on par."

"Educational games, what we call medutainment, are perfectly suited to the Web," declared Harry A. Levy, M.D., Executive Editor of Cyberounds and President of interMDnet. "And, for us, they're fun to develop, too."