OSU CCME: A Custom CME Platform for Ohio State Since 2012

The Ohio State University Center for Continuing Medical Education (CCME) runs conferences, grand rounds, MedNet21 webcasts and online enduring materials for physicians and other healthcare professionals. Since 2012, that program has run on Mobilize CME, the custom platform we built and continue to run. Here’s what the platform does, why it was built custom, and what it supports today. For more on how we approach projects like this, see our custom website and web app development services.

At a glance

• Client: The Ohio State University Center for Continuing Medical Education
• Client since: 2012
• Platform: Mobilize CME, a custom ASP.NET application
• Hosting: Ohio State’s internal medical center IT servers
• Users: more than 105,000

The challenge

A continuing medical education office has to do a lot more than publish an events calendar. Learners need to find an activity, register, pay, attend or watch, pass a post-test and get a certificate. Behind the scenes, the office has to track credits for every learner and report activities and learners to the ACCME’s PARS system.

Off-the-shelf event and learning tools tend to cover one piece of that well and leave the rest to spreadsheets and manual exports. For a program the size of Ohio State’s, running conferences, weekly grand rounds and a large webcast library at the same time, the pieces need to work as one system.

What we did

Rob Carroll first worked on OSU CCME while at Switchbox. When he founded Mobilize Cloud, OSU came along as a client, and we’ve been their CME platform partner since 2012.

We built Mobilize CME as a custom application that handles the full CME workflow in one place:

• Conference finder: filter upcoming conferences by specialty and date, with location and credit hours on each listing.
• Online registration and payment: review the agenda, tiered pricing, location and credit statements, then register and pay online.
• MedNet21 webcast library: browse, sort and filter webcasts by title, release date, credits and specialty.
• Grand Rounds: search sessions by series, specialty and date.
• Credit tracking and certificates for every learner.
• PARS reporting: credits, learners and activities reported to the ACCME’s PARS system.

The platform supports every format CCME runs: live conferences, grand rounds, online webcasts and enduring materials. It runs on Ohio State’s own medical center IT servers, while we build and support the application itself.

A few years ago, OSU upgraded to the enhanced second version of the platform, which was first built for Stony Brook Medicine. The same platform now serves both academic medical centers.

Results

• More than 105,000 users on the platform.
• A partnership since 2012, through a full platform upgrade.
• One system for every format: conferences, grand rounds, webcasts and enduring materials, from registration through certificates and PARS reporting.

The clearest result is longevity: Mobilize CME has grown with Ohio State’s program for well over a decade, and CCME’s public site still carries “Powered by Mobilize Cloud” in its footer.

Client quote

“Mobilize Cloud gets the big picture and listens to your vision, then they take that and move it forward in ways you never thought of.”

— Barbara Berry, Director, Ohio State Center for Continuing Medical Education

Services used

• Custom web application development (ASP.NET)
• Online registration and payment processing
• Ongoing support and enhancements

You can see more of the project on our OSU CCME work page.

Run a CME program?

Mobilize CME also powers the CME program at Stony Brook Medicine. If your office is juggling registrations, credits and PARS reporting across separate tools, see how Mobilize CME works, read more about our healthcare and CME work, or tell us about your project.