Client Objective

The client publishes a print newspaper read by over 75,000 health care professionals. It wished to take that newspaper online, while also:

• Developing a scalable solution for future growth.
• Providing online continuing medical education (CME) materials and examinations.
• Launching the new site within a month.

Our Approach

• Work with the client to understand and formalize the near-term goals and prioritize requirements into a phased approach for the future.
• Start with a small, informative site.
• Provide easy expansion paths.

Our Solution

• Given the short deadline, we focused on the most essential elements for phase one. These included information about the company, selected articles from the newspaper, and the CME exam.
• Care was taken to preserve the brand of the newpaper, while providing a flexible layout and design that can expand as new features are added.
• Professionals taking the exam for credit must register and pay a small fee. We developed software that allows professionals to register once and return to take this and future CME exams at any time. We also deployed our Shopping Cart & Payment Processing SiteStarter™, allowing professionals to charge the fee to their credit card directly from the web site.
• Health care professionals earning a passing grade on the CME exam could earn 1.0 units of AMA category 1 credit. We developed an interface to export exam results to the University of Minnesota Office of Continuing Medical Education, which provides the CME certification for this exam.
• Planned future releases include a full-featured content management system, new disease and medical condition categorization, separate consumer and doctor "pay for content" areas, and new CME tests.

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