In CME Ready to be “Re-Imagined”? Well…

Perhaps it has something to do with the calendar turning over, or maybe it’s because we’re all going a little bit stir crazy looking out our window and imagining how cold it is outside our front door, but this is always the time of year where I hear a lot about the need for “more innovation” in the world of CME.

We need to “re-imagine” how we design and deliver education. We need to “meet learners where they are” with our programming. We need to “think outside the box” to come up with groundbreaking solutions. We need to “get closer to the real provider/patient data” with our outcomes assessments.

I am sure you can come up with some of your own buzzwords or catch phrases that I missed. It’s an annual song and dance – rah rah rah, we can do this better! Let’s tap into our creative possibilities, form strategic alliances that maximize the strengths of the many instead of the few, and really get at the core of how our target audiences want to learn!

(For those of you going to the Alliance conference next month, you are going to hear this a lot)

It’s not that any of this is bad or misguided, but it’s simply unrealistic for a variety of reasons. We’ll start with the reason that no one ever seems to talk about as one of the primary barriers to innovation in CME: Money.

Let’s not lose sight of one simple fact: For most of us, the CME provider who employs us is operating as a business. It’s a business for supporters who devote a specific budget to therapeutic areas of interest. It’s a business for providers who need funding to pay the bills and support their teams financially, whether you are in an academic center, a member association, or a MECC. This is not a charity industry. Yes, most of us are in this at least in some capacity because we care about patients and want to make healthcare providers better at what they do, but there is nonetheless a financial component that underlines our work. If we don’t convince the internal teams within our pharma company to invest in CME programming, we’re out of a job. If we don’t get enough financial support from supporters to fund our programs, we’re out of a job. Plain and simple.

At last fall’s Alliance Industry Summit, there was one presentation in particular that drove home the limits that finances place on innovation in CME. It was a panel comprised of several representatives—both providers and supporters—from a far-reaching educational initiative that involved multiple interventions, an interesting longitudinal learner assessment, and various other tidbits that I can’t remember (this happens a lot when you get to be on the wrong side of age 50). Basically, it was one of those programs that nearly everyone would agree was “innovative” (don’t get me started about how everyone has a different opinion of what is or isn’t innovative – that’s another blog post for another day).

People were really interested in the activity design and its outcomes. “Yes, we should do more of this! This is the type of project my company would love!”

And then came the inevitable question, “Can you tell us—roughly—how much this project cost?”

The response? “Somewhere upwards of $2 million.”

More banging of the drum from the small contingent in the front row — “That’s great! This proves that pharma has money to support innovation! This is what we need to be investing in! Let’s convince our peers to shovel more money into CME so we can support projects like this! We can do this, people!”

But for most of us in the room, we knew right away that this project was the kind of interesting unicorn that pops up every now and then but simply isn’t realistic across even a relatively narrow broad spectrum. When you hear, “Our CME budget is down 10% this year, and it was pretty tight last year,” that’s not a formula for support of innovative programming. While innovation doesn’t have to be expensive—I like to think we do a pretty good job at CMEpalooza being innovative on a shoestring budget—to support the kind of manpower and high-tech doodads that “groundbreaking CME” often requires, a large price tag is usually attached to it.

Every week or so, I like to do an environmental scan to see what sort of online CME programming is available in a given therapeutic area. Without fail, the majority of activities I find are flat webinars – your basic 30 minutes of talking heads and slides, maybe with an animation thrown in or something like that, that we have been doing for years and years. Certainly, it’s nothing that anyone would argue is “innovative” or “re-defines CME.” It’s the same today as it was 10 years ago. The pendulum isn’t moving. Why, you ask? Yes, repeat after me…money.

Webinars are inexpensive to develop and produce, which makes them attractive for pharma to support. They are easy to create and hugely profitable for providers, which makes them attractive to propose. So, on one hand, you get a supporter with limited budget. On the other, you get a business unit (don’t hate only on MECCs here as all providers love their webinars) that is looking to strengthen their bottom line. So then, yes, you get a lot of accredited slide-video webinars out there (at least we’ve moved past the days of slide-audio). I don’t know that many people would argue that these sorts of programs are ideal for our learners, but they are functional and they are fiscally sound for all parties.

This isn’t something that most of us discuss in any sort of public forum because, well, it is frankly a bit embarrassing to admit that a lot of what we do is driven by dollars and not by what is best for our learner community. We would all love to be involved in those $2 million programs that really are exciting and impactful, but it simply isn’t the way the CME world is structured (note from Derek: maybe it should be.)

Now, money isn’t the only barrier to innovation in CME, and there is quite a bit of literature that argues that money is often just an excuse instead of a root cause that prevents innovation. There is likely some truth in this, but I feel strongly that the bottom line drives a lot of what chances we are/are not willing to take with our CME programming. Who is going to spend weeks developing a proposal for a $2+ million innovative initiative that has little chance of being funded as opposed to 10, $200K more realistic “tried and true” initiatives? (note from Derek: I think the argument of one large expensive program vs 10 small inexpensive programs is worth exploring more. Stay tuned….)

The world loves disruptors. Amazon. Uber. Netflix. Companies that truly redefine a space and make us rethink how we’ve done something for many years. But that doesn’t mean that every industry will get this kind of massive disruption, for whatever the reason. It’s just not the way the business world works.

So then, no, in my opinion, there will be no drastic shifts in the way that we design, deliver, and measure accredited education in 2026. Or 2027. Or 2028. I do not believe that we are an industry where any single innovation is going to massively overhaul the way that we design and develop education, at least not that I’ve seen. Shifts will be small—but still important—as we find cost-effective ways to innovate. AI platforms are getting better and more realistic. There are lots of interesting innovators and innovations out there in our community. But disrupting our world and “re-imagining CME”? Sorry, I just don’t see it.