At EPG Health, we have a vision to make digital medical education accessible for all healthcare professionals (HCPs), worldwide.

To us, this means putting the latest and most-clinically relevant medical evidence into the hands of those who need it, no matter their location or role within the multidisciplinary team.

It is about making it as easy as possible for every HCP to discover, consume and act on scientific information that addresses their individual educational needs and clinical practice requirements.

Armed with this knowledge, healthcare professionals globally can be empowered to make better treatment decisions that ultimately lead to better health outcomes for patients – the mission shared by all in our industry.

But several barriers hinder the accessibility of medical education, from socio-economic factors to constraints on time for learning. For some 57% of HCPs, being unable to find the information they need in their clinical practice is at least a weekly frustration.

EPG Health recognizes the challenges and, through our digital medical education platform Medthority (www.medthority.com), is taking action to unlock equity of access for all.

EXPANDING CONTENT AVAILABILITY

A key component of the accessibility challenge is around ensuring the availability of content, worldwide and across the full multidisciplinary team. Let’s take the dissemination of output from medical congresses as an example.

These events are critical sources of the latest medical updates and scientific data, with international congresses in major therapeutic areas able to attract 20,000 top specialists. But how do important takeaways from the congress make it into the hands of a broader range of healthcare professionals involved in the patient pathway?

Content hosted on digital congress platforms is typically restricted to registrants and prohibitive to sift through for a busy HCP. This explains why 81% of HCPs express high demand for access to key takeaways from scientific meetings they are unable to attend.

As a publisher of digital medical education, we feel a responsibility to improve the equity of access to this content, which we address through the provision of valuable congress highlights on Medthority.

MEETING LOCAL NEEDS

It must be noted that the challenge of unlocking access for all is more acute in certain regions than in others. In some countries, socio-economic factors as well as inconsistent and unreliable Wi-Fi connectivity may reduce an HCP’s ability to access the right information.

Even in North America, we see HCPs contending with sometimes significantly lower connectivity speeds compared to Europe. This all needs to be considered when serving content to HCPs, and EPG Health is already making a difference in this space.

With a focus on global reach and local impact, we prioritize the accessibility of the Medthority platform, ensuring content does not consume excessive data and is optimized for speed.

We are also able to localize content to meet regional needs, driving faster learning and adoption by delivering information that is impactful and relevant to HCPs treating patients in a particular location. 

CAPTURING LEARNING MOMENTS

Regardless of their specific role or the location of their practice, healthcare professionals have limited time for learning around their busy clinical schedules, often just a few minutes during their commute or lunch break.

When considering this issue, it is important to think about HCPs as ordinary people, with busy lives and conflicting priorities. There is a tendency to assume that if we simply create high-quality content, healthcare professionals will read it. But this is not how human behavior plays out.

We have to work incredibly hard to earn brief “learning moments” with HCPs.

On Medthority, we see that most engagement with medical education content comes via mobile devices, for an average of 10 mins 30 secs per session. We also understand that most of the time, HCPs will not be actively searching for opportunities to learn.

This means, firstly, we need to reach them with targeted and effective communications via the channels they frequent. As we hurtle towards 75% of HCPs being millennials within the next few years, this increasingly demands the use of social media.

Secondly, when they see one of our communications, recognize an educational need and click through to Medthority, we must ensure HCPs are directly accessing meaningful content that is relevant and actionable for them in the moment.

It has to be optimized for mobile, it has to be pitched to the right level of expertise – depending on whether they are a specialist or a generalist – and it has to be quick and easy to consume, serving the ‘microlearning’ habits of today’s HCPs.

PERSONALIZING ACCESS

EPG Health is going further still as we seek to enhance the accessibility of medical education, leveraging advanced data capabilities and insights to facilitate increasingly personalized learning experiences.

We do this by defining HCPs’ progress through 5 digital stages of learning as they engage in self-directed journeys within Medthority educational programs, often spanning multiple sessions and devices. 

By considering the learning stage – from the initial recognition of an educational need all the way through to implementing changes in their clinical practice – we are able to tailor what content we serve to HCPs on a more personalized basis.

This is about ensuring not only that they receive the right type of content, but that they receive it at the right time in a way that is impactful for their current level of knowledge and experience.

Through our commitment to accessibility and by taking action to earn valuable “learning moments” with HCPs on a daily or weekly basis, we can make a marked impact on an HCP’s clinical practice and patient outcomes.

If you’d like to discuss how we can unlock accessible medical education for all healthcare professionals, please book a meeting or contact us below.