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CO2 emissions: how much could you save by running your med ed online?

Jan Ash — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:16:21 +0000

CO2 emissions: how much could you save by running your med ed online?

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Unbelievably, it was over 30 years ago that Dr. James Hansen, then director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies, first said to a Committee: “In my opinion, the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Unfortunately, the problem continues and our actions are still causing evident long-term changes in weather patterns, resulting in widespread devastation around the world: wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, drought. A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in 2014 stated that the increase in greenhouse gases over the past 100 years has primarily been a result of human activities. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen 25% since 1958 (source: NOAA), however, there is still hope: The IPPC believe that if we can restrict any increase in atmospheric temperatures to less than 1.5°C, we have a chance to protect our planet from irreversible changes, and we can do that by reducing our carbon emissions.

A carbon neutral company

As propagators of online meetings, we naturally have a low carbon footprint (a measure of how much greenhouse gases our company is responsible for emitting into the atmosphere). In 2019, pre-pandemic, our carbon footprint was just 6.2 tonnes of CO2e – to put that into context, that is the equivalent of running 1.3 small passenger cars for a year. This was calculated by Orbis Advisory Ltd in line with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol. We offset our carbon emissions through a programme that protected rainforests in Brazil and planted trees in the United Kingdom, to become fully carbon neutral.

Carbon offsetting is one way to help tackle climate change; by investing in initiatives that actively remove the harmful greenhouse gases from the atmosphere we can combat a big part of the problem. This is not the only action we need to be taking though. As organisations, we need to be actively trying to reduce our emissions in the first place as well as offsetting those emissions we do produce.

Helping you reduce your emissions

In traditional medical education, expert speakers fly all round the world to connect with different groups of doctors, sharing their experiences and updating frontline healthcare professionals in the latest medical advances. The Corpus works with some of the largest pharmaceutical companies around the world to develop engaging online medical education programmes, reducing this environmental impact (largely from flight emissions) for our clients. We connect speakers based in Australia with hospitals in Brazil and experts from Germany can talk to doctors in Japan – all without having to leave their city or town. Our virtual meetings, on average, prevent 2.11 tonnes of CO2e from entering the atmosphere – just three meetings with us would save as much in CO2e as we emit in a year.

In 2019 alone, we helped reduce one clients’ emissions by over 183 tonnes.

We're committed to change

The Corpus, as part of the AS&K Group, is committed to tackling climate change and reducing our emissions. As a group we have set ambitious goals using the Science Based Target initiative’s (SBTi) framework.

And we’re not just committed to reducing our own carbon footprint; we want to help you reduce yours too. Contact us to find out how our medical education programmes can be built into your long-term climate commitments.

Jan Ash Wed, 22/09/2021 - 09:16

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Each meeting run online, rather than in-person, stops more than 2 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere. Find out how we are helping our clients reduce their carbon footprint by developing virtual global medical education programmes.

Author name and role

Sarah Stickland - Director

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Sarah Stickland

Tomorrow’s healthcare systems and the preventative care model

Jan Ash — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 08:42:28 +0000

Tomorrow’s healthcare systems and the preventative care model

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Many public healthcare systems are based around a ‘sick care’ model where people seek and receive treatment when they fall ill. With many countries grappling a growing and ageing population (1), there is an increasing overall burden on healthcare systems per capita. One way of managing the growing demands on healthcare systems is a refocusing of resources and treatment towards a ‘preventative care’ model. In such a model, people are treated earlier, before they become ill, and they are assisted in maintaining healthy, active lifestyles. This would mean that the overall burden of diseases and health complications were minimized or avoided entirely.

For the purposes of this brief exploration, I will use public health care systems as the system of focus, given that they are widely argued to be the most equitable and cost-effective systems of population-wide healthcare provision within national boundaries (2). Questions of health equity between countries and regions will not be addressed, though these points are critical to issues of international equity in health and beyond.

To implement any fundamental restructuring in public services, there of course needs to be ample supporting evidence and socio-political support. The cost-benefits analysis of restructuring towards a ‘preventative’ model are difficult to quantify, as evidence in the form of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is not feasible for methodological reasons (3). It is for this reason that there is hesitancy in adopting such a transition. However, a recent review of over 200 public health interventions (4) concluded that the ‘vast majority’ of public health interventions are highly cost-effective. For example, In the NHS Five Year Forward View (5), it’s strongly put that “if the nation fails to get serious about prevention, then recent progress in healthy life expectancies will stall, health inequalities will widen, and our ability to fund beneficial new treatments will be crowded-out by the need to spend billions of pounds on wholly avoidable illness”.

The provision of healthcare towards preventative measures is a viable, and indeed urgent, means for decreasing costs to taxpayers, and improving health outcomes. Further, this approach would be mutually beneficial to all stakeholders. For instance, private-public partnerships may provide a sustainable avenue for the improvement of healthcare services and social welfare outcomes — a win-win scenario of sorts, whereby both the private sector and the public benefit from the effective mobilization of resources. Of course, private-public partnerships are not without their complications (6) but from the perspective of public policymaking, so long as there is no conflict between private interests and the health provision activity, there is an opportunity for success (7).

In summary, we need to urgently pivot towards a ‘preventative’ care model, whereby people receive treatment earlier, and are kept in a healthier default state. This transition will be economically sensible — to ensure that the services delivered at cost to the taxpayer are of a high standard, as well as being ethically just, more effective and earlier health intervention will ensure that the disease progression is kept at minimum, thereby improving aggregate quality of life through treatment. Perhaps most importantly, if we are to invest in such a change now, the results may not be borne out for 30 years, but they will be instrumental in maintaining our healthcare provision as the burden on such systems increases.

Citations

1 — Lutz, W., Sanderson, W. and Scherbov, S., 2008. The coming acceleration of global population ageing. Nature, 451(7179), pp.716-719.

2 — Marriott, A., 2009. Blind Optimism: Challenging the myths about private health care in poor countries. Oxfam.

3 — Schwappach, D.L., Boluarte, T.A. and Suhrcke, M., 2007. The economics of primary prevention of cardiovascular disease–a systematic review of economic evaluations. Cost effectiveness and resource allocation, 5(1), pp.1-12.

4 — Owen, L., Pennington, B., Fischer, A. and Jeong, K., 2018. The cost-effectiveness of public health interventions examined by NICE from 2011 to 2016. Journal of Public Health, 40(3), pp.557-566.

5 — NHS England, Public Health England, Health Education England, Monitor, Care Quality Commission, NHS Trust Development Authority Five Year Forward View, http://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5yfv-web.pdf [Accessed 08 July 2021]

6 — Barlow, J., Roehrich, J. and Wright, S., 2013. Europe sees mixed results from public-private partnerships for building and managing health care facilities and services. Health Affairs, 32(1), pp.146-154.

7 — Parker, L.A., Zaragoza, G.A. and Hernández-Aguado, I., 2019. Promoting population health with public-private partnerships: Where’s the evidence?. BMC public health, 19(1), pp.1-8.

Jan Ash Mon, 19/07/2021 - 08:42

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Could a switch to a preventative care model result in a more cost-effective and efficient healthcare system? We explore whether a switch could ultimately lead to a decrease in the volume of sick care required and provide mutual benefits for all stakeholders.

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The Corpus Content Team

What does the future hold for continuing medical education?

Beatrice — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 10:49:35 +0000

What does the future hold for continuing medical education?

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The annual European CME Forum is a must for anybody working in medical education. The forum brings together like-minded individuals to discuss the challenges faced over the past year, analyse success stories and share best practice. Although forced to move online this year, the organisers did a great job of keeping participants engaged throughout the course of the three-day event. Here are just a few of my top take-aways:

“Don’t write your French essay in English and just translate it”

In other words, don’t take the content for your face-to-face meeting and dump it into an online setting, it just won’t work. Content needs to be carefully considered for the specific audience you are intending to reach, and for the specific format of your online meeting — for example, content for a live panel discussion will vary greatly from that of a workshop.

Education should be outcome-focused: start with the end goal in mind

What are you trying to achieve with your online educational activity? That should be the driving force of any decision you make — from audience to faculty, format to frequency, every step should consider the end goal and be planned accordingly.

A good chair offline can be a lousy chair online

Taking responsibility for the effective running of an online meeting requires a specific skillset. If somebody has been chairing your face-to-face events for many years and always does a great job, don’t assume they can do the same in an online setting. Although many of the skills will be applicable in both settings, a virtual meeting chair also needs to understand the platform they are using and be able to monitor typed questions coming in, collating any similar questions before posing them to the panel or responding themselves.

Online meetings offer an easy opportunity for further content

A lot of virtual meetings are recorded by default these days. That means, as the organiser, you have instant access to a great knowledge base. With minimal additional work from you or the Faculty, you can create supporting materials from the original meetings: an on-demand library of full meetings, bite-size highlight reels, downloadable slide decks and summary reports to name but a few.

What next for medical education?

It was clear from the presentations, workshops, panel meetings and tabletop discussions that virtual meetings are set to continue being an important part of medical education. Although certainly not a replacement for all face-to-face events, we need to continue to embrace the new technologies that are being developed, whilst remaining aware of “zoom-fatigue” and that learners are often time-poor. It is important we provide the right education in an engaging, accessible and innovative way.

The Corpus has been running first-class online medical education meetings since 2014 and is continuing to evolve and develop both our programmes and our meeting platform to meet the ever-changing needs of physicians around the world. Our expertise, stretching far beyond the surge in demand seen this year, helps our clients make the most of their virtual meetings and understand how best to incorporate them into future planning.

For more information about how The Corpus can help you plan for success in 2021 and beyond, email: jan.ash@the-corpus.com or call us on +44 (0)20 7428 2903.

Beatrice Mon, 09/11/2020 - 10:49

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As with a lot of annual congresses this year, the 13^th Annual European CME Forum went virtual and it was a great success! Over the course of three days, we talked about everything Medical Education/CME/CPD-related and, not surprisingly, with a very heavy focus on online meetings.

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Sarah Stickland, Associate Director

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The Real Value of Virtual in These Times

Beatrice — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 11:26:03 +0000

The Real Value of Virtual in These Times

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I doubt there is anyone in the world right now that hasn’t been affected or somehow impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping the globe. Although each country has a different level of infection, there is one thing common to all. Life as we knew it has changed.

Hopefully these changes will just be temporary and our lives will largely return to normal in a few weeks, although it is more likely going to take months to regain some sense of normality. Once restrictions are lifted, and daily lives start to resume in the way we have so long been accustomed, we still have a long struggle ahead of us. Our economies have taken a massive hit, and the businesses we were so comfortable running will need rebuilding.

However, we shouldn’t put our lives on hold, but rather adapt how we live for now. I’m having virtual dinner parties with friends and families — we all try and cook the same thing and sit down to eat together on our webcams. It isn’t the same of course, but we can have a catch up, laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

We want to be able to provide that same kind of thing to you as a business. We know the healthcare industry is stretched to its breaking point at the moment, and we want to be there to provide support where it is needed. We want to continue to use The Corpus platform to connect healthcare professionals around the world, not just for our current clients, but for anyone affected by the coronavirus. For those of you that have had to cancel face-to-face events, we will work hard with your teams to move these events online.

Sharing knowledge and experience will be a key part of beating COVID-19; The Corpus would be incredibly proud to be able to facilitate these conversations online. If you have been involved in frontline care of patients with COVID-19 and are willing to share your experience, we’d love to help connect you with doctors, nurses and specialists that need your insight all around the world.

During these unprecedented times, The Corpus is in a unique position to be able to make a real difference to the management of the global pandemic. We want to offer our services to anyone that feels their experience can help others treat their patients. Contact me (sarah.stickland@the-corpus.com) or Jan Ash (jan.ash@the-corpus.com) for more information.

Beatrice Thu, 26/03/2020 - 11:26

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During these unprecedented times, the whole team here at The Corpus wants to help companies and people in the healthcare industry get on with their lives as best they can.

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Sarah Stickland

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Sarah Stickland

Leveraging Online Meetings in Healthcare

Beatrice — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 15:51:13 +0000

Leveraging Online Meetings in Healthcare

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Leveraging Online Meetings in Healthcare

Digital meetings between pharmaceutical or medical device organisations and healthcare professionals could be considered as an essential tool for forming and strengthening relationships. Providing the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting, the numerous benefits to bringing people together online may explain why they’re now more popular than ever. Medical science liaisons are in constant communication with healthcare professionals, and e-meetings can really enhance this connection without the cost and disruption of travel for either party.

Keeping costs down

One of the biggest benefits to online meetings versus face to face is reducing costs. The cost of meeting online is virtually negligible compared to multiple stakeholders travelling to be in the same location. Ultimately, these cost efficiencies mean greater budget can be allocated in areas of greater use to the patient. By leveraging online, you get the benefit of an internationally recognised expert without the cost of flying them to each venue where their insight is of value.

Protecting the environment

We are all becoming a lot more conscious of our carbon footprint and the impact we, as individuals, are having on global environmental issues. A big contributor to greenhouse gases is air travel, with445 million business-related flights still taking place each year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that air travel accounts for as much as 3.5% of human-caused climate change, so we really need to stop flying unless it is absolutely essential. Virtual meetings are a simple way to do this, without sacrificing the benefits.

Bringing groups together

These meetings don’t need to be one-to-one or large impersonal broadcasts; small groups of professionals can convene online and work together either to grow a network of stakeholders or strengthen existing relationships between medical science liaisons and healthcare professionals. While large congresses and meetings have their benefits, the small group feel can really strengthen bonds between stakeholders and fosters greater interactivity. This small group meeting can be difficult to justify if travel is required, online it’s easy to see the benefit.

Time efficient meetings

Virtual meetings don’t only save money and reduce environmental impact, they are a hugely time efficient way for disparate teams to work together. By meeting online, healthcare professionals can learn what the latest trial results mean for them and their patients or discuss specific cases rather than learning from generic written information.

Access difficult to pin down stakeholders

Within healthcare many stakeholders can be, understandably, difficult to access. They are unbelievably time-crunched, with high priority patient needs rightly taking precedence over anything else. By ensuring meetings are time- and cost-efficient you reduce the burden on each participant meaning they are more likely to say yes to taking part.

Improved technology, improved connection

As technology improves, so does the quality and functionality of online meetings. Gone are the days of old fashioned and poorly functional conferencing software. Virtual meetings are smooth, slick and easy to take part in from a desktop or handheld device.

Conclusion

When you consider all the benefits of meeting online it becomes difficult to justify a face-to-face meeting if stakeholders would need to travel to attend. As teams, even within the same organisation, are increasingly spread around the globe the internet allows the best people for the job — regardless of location — to come together and improve patient care. Find out how we can facilitate your online meeting. <link>

For more information on how The Corpus could help, contact Jan Ash (jan.ash@the-corpus.com, T: +44 (0)20 7428 2903, M: +44 (0)7970 230 197)

Beatrice Mon, 03/02/2020 - 15:51

Intro paragraph

Digital meetings between pharmaceutical or medical device organisations and healthcare professionals could be considered as an essential tool for forming and strengthening relationships.

Author name and role

The Corpus Content Team

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The Corpus Content Team

Top Trumps: Digital vs. F2F

Beatrice — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 14:39:53 +0000

Top Trumps: Digital vs. F2F

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The role of the Medical Science Liaison has evolved over the last thirty years, and rightly so.

With the introduction of the internet, everyone’s role has taken a more digital edge. Gone are the days when you had to send all your important communications in the post, or spend days tracking down a telephone number for that KOL you wanted to speak to.

But one thing that perhaps hasn’t been embraced so boldly is the online meeting. We are still in an environment where we assume face to face (F2F) is always better. You don’t get the same interaction with an online meeting. Right?

Wrong.

Online meetings can still be interactive. In fact, some might even argue a small-group online meeting may be more interactive than a large-scale conference. You just need to get the balance right.

I’ve been playing a lot of top trumps with my nephew recently, and if we pitted F2F against online in a top trumps battle, I think online would stand a good chance in most categories: environmentally friendly, cost-effective, convenient and, particularly in Corpus meetings, interactive.

So how do you make sure your online meeting delivers?

The first thing you need to do is choose the right platform. There are lots of digital meeting rooms out there, but each one offers something slightly different. The most common versions will usually provide a downloadable bit of software to enable multiple users to join the same online meeting room, but often this will be limited to audio only if the meeting is for more than a few people.

The Corpus is a dedicated provider of online medical education meetings, working at the cutting-edge of technology to ensure our virtual meeting platform is always ahead of the game and accessible to all. Up to twenty users can join Corpus meetings via HD video feed and the platform allows for moderated and interactive multi-way conversations.

Online meetings can provide an excellent way for participants to speak with global experts, irrespective of their location. They break down physical barriers and can offer unique opportunities to share knowledge and discuss ground-breaking clinical trials.

But can anything really ever replace face-to-face? I think there is definitely still a place for meetings in person but with budgets being increasingly slashed, virtual meetings could be our saving grace. They can reach across oceans, over mountains and even between languages. We can’t always afford face-to-face, and I’m just saying that there are other options.

Over the coming months, we’ll be revealing the top tips to get the most from your online meetings, advice on how to make sure your audience remains engaged and explore the key benefits of virtual medical education.

But you don’t have to wait until the next article, to find out more about how The Corpus can help with your virtual meeting needs, contact the team today.

Link to PDF here

Beatrice Mon, 02/12/2019 - 14:39

Intro paragraph

We are still in an environment where we assume face to face (F2F) is always better. You don’t get the same interaction with an online meeting. Right?

Wrong!

Author name and role

Sarah Stickland - Responsible for the overall running of The Corpus, developing programmes with the Steering Committee, reviewing processes and analysing emerging trends in med ed to ensure The Corpus remains a leading provider of online roundtable meetings.

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