Doctors.net.uk

Doctors.net.uk, Prova Education and Omnia Education announce medical education partnership

Doctors.net.uk, the UK’s largest and most active professional network of physicians, has entered a partnership with US-based continuing medical education companies, Prova Education and Omnia Education. As a result, a range of new medical education and learning services will be become available to Doctors.net.uk’s membership of over 190,000 GMC-registered doctors.

The agreement with Prova and Omnia, which are affiliated organisations that form part of US HealthConnect, will combine their considerable strength in education design, needs assessments and content development, with Doctors.net.uk’s existing portfolio of online learning services.

With the licensing of new learning tools and fully accredited content in both primary care and specific therapy areas, it will provide members with a diverse array of learning methods and media. Coupled with the learning management tools already provided by Doctors.net.uk, it will further support doctors in meeting the requirements of appraisal and revalidation.

The first programme delivered as part of this new partnership is to provide an accredited CME learning needs assessment on the topic of non-Small cell lung cancer for chest physicians. The assessment will support chest physicians in determining the suitability of advanced lung cancer patients for chemotherapy.

The data collected will be used to generate quantitative and qualitative assessments of the current knowledge of chest physicians and related healthcare personnel. It will also suggest intervention strategies to improve patient outcomes. It supports the extensive resources that Doctors.net.uk already offers its members on the topic of cancer including the Cancer Insight Centre.

Dr James Quekett, Education Lead at Doctors.net.uk, said “Doctors.net.uk already provides thousands of hours of accredited CPD training to UK doctors each month. We are pleased to join forces with Prova and Omnia to deliver a true blended learning experience to UK doctors.

With ever-growing pressure on budgets, the ability to co-ordinate online and offline activities ensures that CME programmes can be targeted at physicians based on need and benefit, for example helping to identify those who would best benefit from attending a physical Med Ed event through an online assessment module. Such an approach enables investment to be better directed to those best able to deliver the desired improvements in clinical competence and patient outcomes.”

Lawrence Sherman, Senior Vice President of Education Strategy for Prova Education, added "Prova Education's global expertise in developing needs assessments and localising education to close performance gaps is key to this alliance. Our strengths in primary care and specialty medicine, such as oncology, will guide our collaboration with Doctors.net.uk as we localise content and measure extensively the impact on physicians across the UK."

Frank Russomano, President and Chief Executive Officer of parent organisation, US HealthConnect, said "Through this strategic alliance, the educational programmes of Prova Education and Omnia Education, a leading global entity on women's health education, will reach the widest possible audiences to participate in blended-format learning experiences.”