Pittsburgh-based CECity, which provides online CME and quality improvement tools, capped 2004 with two eHealthcare Leadership awards for its CE Medicus site: a Platinum Award for Best Health/Healthcare Content, and a Gold Award for Best Overall Internet Site. Earlier in the year, the company won the prestigious 2004 William Campbell Felch/Wyeth Award for Research in CME from the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education for the SCOPE project it did with the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The company also won the 2004 Standard of Excellence International WebAward from the Web Marketing Association.

“It was an exciting year for us,” says Simone Karp, RPh, executive vice president, business development, with CECity. “The Platinum Award was based on whether material is credible, balanced, and current, which is something we're very proud of.” She notes also that the Gold Award, which focuses on the delivery of powerful health content, strength of design, and ease of navigation, was also very important to the company. The earlier WebAward was for similar criteria. “We recognize that ease of navigation is important for healthcare professionals, who want to focus on the content, not the technology.” Noting that the 2005 Medical Meetings Annual Physician Survey (see page 26) reports that difficulty with navigation is a top reason stopping some physicians from using online CME, Karp adds that her company is reaping the rewards of its award-winning technology in terms of increased utilization by healthcare professionals. “We're seeing tremendous growth across the healthcare profession in terms of online CME and CE,” she says.

“CECity didn't set out to build cool technology for healthcare professionals. We are healthcare professionals who understand medical education and set out to design tools to deliver and track outcomes measurement for healthcare education.”

Building on the success of its Felch Award — winning outcomes measurement platform, Karp says to expect more new technology along these lines this year. “Where we see this technology going is to continue to provide ways to measure the outcomes for quality improvement. We're going to be launching a new technology in 2005 that will provide tools for things like needs assessment and outcomes measurement in medical education.” For more information, go to www.cecity.com.