Participants:
H Halila (Finlande), B Maillet (Belgique), L Harvey (UK) représentant le comité éxécutif de l'UEMS. G Faure (France), P Naredi (Suède), A Van Assche (Belgique), JW Weidriger (Allemagne)
Apologies from
S del Giacco, J van Bockel

H Halila (President) will be present during the whole meeting
L Harvey [ Gynecologist] (liaison officer) will chair this new working group of the UEMS.
B Maillet [Pathologist] (secretary general) will report.

P Naredi (S) is a surgeon from Umea and belongs to the accreditation council of oncology in Europe (ACOE). They have a large experience of long distance teaching of surgical techniques and procedures, using state of the art "simple" video technology in the north of Sweden. It seems to be a tele-teaching system designed to cover the surgery field (6 sessions per year during 4 years) for a small group of specialist trainees.

L Harvey, a consultant, was in charge of the EAACME. He fears the activism of American commercial CME products/producers who would like to conquer the European market.
He quotes the Scholar (? )database developed by Stanford and the MIT, working in Wales with GPs, a rather expensive system.

G Faure presented the approach of the French Immunologists and the development of the ASSIM website, portal to immunological scientific information and the development of RAISIL project in the French Campus Numérique and UMVF Projects.

A van Assche from Leuven, reports that Leuven University offers a 3 hours teaching program every week, to various universities in Belgium and France, reaching 250 to 300 trainees. This program is accepted for accreditation.
The GynOb section/board is interested in launching an educational journal and discusses with some publishers.

JW Weidringer belongs to the executive office of the Bavarian Chamber of Physicians. He insists on the importance of security and safety of cooperation contracts with publishers, for the delivery of CME credits to specialists.
They are organizing a small workshop with representative of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada which has developped innovative procedures for CME evaluation.
Website to look at: www.blaek.de

H Halila reports that in Finland long-distance medicine is already working well in dermatology or psychiatry. He thinks that similar quality criteria should be applied to long distance learning and to traditional CME. The future is more CPD (continuous professional development)-oriented than CME-oriented He attended in New York a meeting of GAME (Global Alliance for Medical Education) and confirms that an agregation of American based commercial providers is very willing to offer their products in Europe.

B Millet confirms that many of them are asking regularly UEMS secretariat for european acrreditation. (for example Thomson (ex ISI) was apparently in charge of the CME at the EULAR meeting in Portugal)

All think that due to increasing costs and time required for transportation, Long distance learning is inevitable. They seem to focus more on CME of established specialists, than to initial training. They seem to duplicate the event-based traditional teaching sessions, even with the usual sponsorship of pharmaceutical companies
G Faure tried to raise the problem of the necessity of other approaches focused on initial and/or continuous training of medical doctors, requiring the development of reference resources, and clinically-based problems which can be used for self-teaching.
The Royal College of GynOb is producing every 6 months a CD-ROM with 20 clinical scenarios with can be used as a teaching tool in medical universities and individually by MDs as a CME.
www.rcog.org.uk
DIALOG program

Regarding supports, the group feels that the CD-ROM is just another sophisticated textbook. However, I am not sure all the possibilities of the Internet medium are well integrated, although Canadians seem to integrate all activities of medical doctors involved in CME through their system in a web diary more than a classical evaluation procedure through simplistic MCQs.
However, for some American providers, Internet appears to be the single way to obtain (or buy) CME credits, and could be a way to create subscpecialism, for example hypertension specialist in cardiology!

The main interest of the UEMS is the accreditation of long distance learning systems and the evaluation of users.
The European situation seems to be very heterogeneous, varying from country to country, or even from Land to Land in Germany.
Everything depends on the accreditation procedures of MDs.
Although mandatory, if the procedures are not deployed as in France, the topic seems unreal. In other countries, the subject is very sensitive
Who should accreditate? National bodies, European bodies, national or European associations? Problem of EBAC (European board for accreditation in Cardiology) which is apparently raising an equity problem. UK insists on the fact that one cannot be judge and jury.
Some kind of subsidiarity remains inevitable.
The evaluation measurement unit will certainly be inspired of traditional measurements.

The topic of direct or undirect sponsorship by industries, not only pharmaceutical, but also of professional congress organizers should depend on clear ethical-based rules, and the organization of LDL should involve Universities, academic organizations, societies and professional boards.
UEMS will try to inform the public through its seat at the Health Policy Forum.