Beginning in September, primary care practitioners will be able to earn CME credit on primary care topics for free at Pri-Med s Web site.
The site sounds pretty slick: it organizes its e-CME activities into "Condition Resource Centers" that reflect high-incidence patient populations in primary care. Inside each center, "clinicians can choose how they want to learn--through interactive case studies, clinical reviews, expert perspectives or multimedia lectures that highlight new developments and practice guidelines. The site will also be customizable, allowing users to track their live Pri-Med program registrations and CME credits earned, follow their key clinical topics of interest and save important information resources for future reference," says the press release.
Stressing that its online component will be an addition to, rather than competition for, the 100 live meetings it holds each year, Anne Goodrich, director of research at the Pri-Med Institute, says in the release, "While more than half of the physicians surveyed by the Pri-Med Institute indicate that live meetings are their preferred source of continuing medical education, 84% have spent at least some time in an eCME activity in the last year," Goodrich said.
It doesn t say how this will get paid for, much less make money for the company, but if it s anything like their live meetings, it could prove to be quite successful. What it might mean as competition for other sites that charge for their offerings remains to be seen.
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