Healthcare professionals derive extensive educational benefit from attending and presenting at live symposia. Leaders in the field present the latest practice and research findings while peers in attendance interact as they see fit. The general consensus among healthcare professionals is that the live medical meeting is a proven means of disseminating valuable medical information. Making a compelling case or presenting a proven drug benefit can result in acceptance and direct practice application. Given the live event’s power to affect treatment regimens by the attendees in their own practices, companies and markets have evolved to support thousands of meetings each year around the world.

The post-event, enduring material market is one that provides strong reinforcement and value to the healthcare community. Those that could not attend the live event are not locked out; they are given the opportunity to review the material if they are placed in the enduring material distribution channel. Whether a simple archival mechanism such as an unedited audiotape or a published monograph containing editorial content, thousands of enduring materials are produced from content presented at live events. Hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals receive enduring materials every month. As the enduring material market has matured over the years, an often-asked question is – “what makes an enduring material effective?”

The answer to the enduring material effectiveness question starts, however, by asking another question; “what makes a live event effective?” If a substantial amount of content for the enduring material originates from presentations given at the live event, is there a direct correlation to the enduring material’s effectiveness and the live meeting’s effectiveness?

The quality links between the live meeting, its content, and the resulting enduring material cannot be ignored. Consider the following connections between the live event and enduring material post-produced from the proceedings.

The Live Meeting -- What Makes an Effective Live Meeting?

1. Content. Presented content goes beyond the data, the content represents a body of knowledge. We define knowledge as information containing the presenter’s reflection, insight, context, and experience. The content, or knowledge, can be put to use immediately by attendees in their own practices. The content can be used to deliver positive health benefits to patients under the care of professionals in attendance.
2. Participation and Feedback. A full house of attendees that maximizes the total number of those who can benefit from the content. Those in attendance are an appropriate audience to receive the content and they can apply it to patient care if they so choose. Attendees would recommend a peer receive the post-event enduring material in order to evaluate the content’s applicability to their own practices.
3. Leading Presenters. Content presented by leaders in the field, generally thought of as a Knowledge Opinion Leaders (KOL). Presentations given by KOLs add credibility to the content.
4. Peer Review. Peer reviewed or CME approved content that removes or significantly reduces bias in the presentations.
5. Comfort. A comfortable setting for the proceedings, including appropriate audio visual production, lighting, seating, food, drink, accommodations, etc..
6. Supporter Help. The feedback from the supporter is positive; the attendees are likely to properly apply the content in their practices in order to benefit patient healthcare.

What are the contributor’s roles for an effective live meeting?

1. KOL: Data and literature review, research, reflection, insight, context, experience. Present a body of knowledge to the audience that is actionable and make hypotheses about evolving treatments and regimens.
2. Medical Education Agency: Program management, marketing, KOL support.
3. Attendees: Interact with peers and presenters and challenge your practice’s treatment regimen against what was presented. Do I need to change patient therapy based on what I learned today?
4. Supporter: Fund the event without unduly biasing the proceedings. The live event is an educational proceeding, not a marketing event.

The Enduring Material -- What Makes an Effective Enduring Material?
Let’s take a look at what drives enduring material effectiveness.

1. Content. Presented content is not edited or the editing is strictly limited. The material’s production should strive to be truthful to the live event. Each presentation should appear in its entirety. However, the post-event production can add value by removing extraneous information that normally occurs at the live event, such as introductions, dead times between presentations, etc.
2. Distribution. An intelligently prepared mailing list or email list of post-event attendees should be used to maximize the number of those receiving the material. Budgets may limit the number of recipients.
3. No Bias. Each KOL presentation should be unedited.
4. Timely turnaround. CME authority should expedite review and approval of the enduring material, ensuring proper review and approvals by KOLs.
5. Ease of Use, Applicability. The material should be easy to use, navigate, archive, allow for quizzing if CME, etc. Recipients should not be frustrated with the product, it should provide an enjoyable and educational experience.

What are the contributor’s roles for an effective enduring material?

1. KOL: A speedy review and verification that the original presentation and content are intact.
2. Medical Education Agency: Select proper channels of distribution to include up to date mailing addresses, email addresses, etc. Regard fast turnaround of the enduring material as critical to the effectiveness of the material. Do not allow production companies to delay quick turns. Look to create a mix of enduring materials by recognizing end users don’t all want the same format.
3. Recipients or End Users: Review the material in its entirety if possible. CD-ROMs and other electronic materials should provide intuitive navigation allowing easy search. Challenge yourself and ask if your practice could benefit from the content. Give feedback to the providers letting them know if this material was of benefit to you and your practice.
4. Supporter: No involvement in post-event materials if program is CME.
5. Production Company: Produce the material as soon after the live event as possible. Delays in turnaround benefit no one, especially the end users who may be able to use the material’s content immediately. Create easy to use products without gimmicks. The goal is to present the data clearly and efficiently.

How Do You Measure Effectiveness?

1. If you spend $200,000 on a live event that fills 300 seats at a dinner meeting, is that effective? Was your goal to put bodies in seats without regard to how they use the content in their practices, in other words, is the content actionable? If so, that could be considered effective. However, if every person in attendance walks out the door and still buys the competition’s product, does that change the measure of effectiveness?
2. You pay $30,000 to post a journal online and count the number of monthly hits and your quota is met for the first three months, is that effective?
3. You make 5,000 CD-ROMs from presentations given at a live meeting and conduct a mailing campaign to qualified recipients. No CDs get returned in the process, is that effective?

Producing the Right Enduring Material
There’s a spectrum of enduring materials available on the market that serve various purposes. The least edited material is an audio tape, video tape, or transcript of the event. These materials offer exact replicas of the event, however, they suffer from their own linearity; rapid navigation is a non-starter. One must navigate over content to get to content, you cannot perform a quick search. At the opposite end of the spectrum are monographs or online summaries. These materials offer a quick review of the proceedings, however, there’s an editorial bias that looks similar to an article in a newspaper. One must rely on an editor or group of editors to summarize the proceedings with little or no bias. The recipient of the material is digesting a third-party review and summary of the presentations; therefore, one must assume that this extra layer of human touch adds some hue that cannot be ignored. For certain applications, this type of enduring material is appropriate.

Like everyday media, we have a choice in how we view, read, and digest content. Enduring materials are produced electronically and in hard copy. As we all know, email changed everything. It changed our perspective on communication speed and response, from communicating to one person to communicating to thousands with a keystroke. Accordingly, more than ninety percent (90%) of our personal and professional communication centers on the computer.

Producers of enduring materials leverage the computer-centric world we live in by producing the majority of materials electronically and with less filters and less editors. More interestingly, consumers of materials are peers of the original content creators and those giving the presentations. Consumers want a direct dialogue with the Knowledge Opinion Leaders or KOLs. We see the majority of materials reflect the consumer desire for no editing bias or filters in the communication with the KOL.

Measurement Feedback – CME Programs have their Boundaries
There’s no way around deciding how effective an enduring material is without a measurement feedback loop. You have to decide what behavior or activity you want to measure and include this in your program. You can use any technique or technology you want, but you must have measurements to answer the “how effective?” question.

Unfortunately, measuring effectiveness in the CME realm is not straightforward. Up until a few years ago, counting the number of attendees at the live was directly related to the number of CME certificates submitted. As the number of channels for CME distribution grew online and through the mail, the total certificate measure has been pushed aside. In other words, using CME certificates alone is a poor measure of the effectiveness of the enduring material. If 10,000 CD-ROMs are mailed out and only one (1) percent CME certificates are returned, no one believes that only 100 people actually viewed the material.

Producers of electronic enduring materials have created Business Reply Card (BRC) programs that allow users to mail back feedback free of charge. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive way to gage the material’s effectiveness. Another is through Disc-Trends and Online-Trends. These two (2) technologies provide the number of users, unique IDs, and total time spent viewing the material. When used together with the CME certificates and BRCs, a more complete measure of usage and effectiveness is achieved.

Conclusions and Recommendations for Creating Effective Enduring Materials

1. Plan the enduring material concurrently with the live event. As you develop the content for the event months in advance, recognize that the enduring material’s success will be assured if it does not become an afterthought. Engage the KOLs and let them know your plans for producing an enduring material. Just as you are thinking about pre-registration and how to ensure the live event attendance, do the same for the distribution channel for the enduring material. Get your enduring material production company onboard at this time too. The bottom line is to set everyone’s expectations accordingly.
   
   
2. Create a mix of enduring materials. Satisfy end-user desires to make their own choices on how they digest the content. Some users are electronically orientated and prefer CD-ROMs or the Internet. Others prefer paper products like monographs. The goal is not to limit the content’s dissemination to one medium, use multiple formats, create a mix.
   
   
3. Measure usage and effectiveness through technologies like Disc-Trends and Online-Trends. Disc-Trends allow CD-ROMs to communicate to a server with pings on activity. Online-Trends or similar web applications provide robust reporting. Disc-Trends and Online-Trends help answer the question “how are we doing?” Add a BRC mailing program to the measurement mix.
   
   
4. Do not over-edit the original content. Your goal is to create a faithful reproduction of the live event, not an editorial piece. Why? Consumers of enduring materials are generally peers of the presenters, and just like the live event, they don’t want filters and edits coming between direct dialogues. They want to hear, see, and digest the original content for themselves and determine applicability in their own practices.