Platform Colegio de Médicos de Irapuato
Colegio de Médicos de Irapuato (CMIAC), or Irapuato’s Medical Association, was established in 1970 with the express purpose of promoting life long learning and continuous training of local healthcare professionals. CMIAC was registered in 2009 with “Secretaria de Profesiones del Estado de Guanajuato”, the Government body overseeing industry trade groups. Three years later, in 2012, CMIAC organised its first regional conference.
Titled “Congreso Regional para Médicos Familiares y Generales”, the conference was backed by Universidad de Guanajuato and the Asociación Latinoamericana de Diabetes, or Latin American Diabetes Association, and granted credited hours towards medical recertification for the attendees. Later came the “Jornadas de Actualización Médica”, a weekly conference cicle that also granted credited hours.
Year 2020 promised a lot, for it was CMIAC’s 50th anniversary. They planned a gala to honour past members; a ball on the night of September 28; anniversary rings and conmemorativa plaques were made. And it was all supposed to be held during the VIII Edition of their Annual Conference. However, this was not meant to be, as the Global Coronavirus Pandemic dismantled their plans, casting a long shadow over CMIAC’s future.
The Lockdown, the looming recession, and layoffs halted CMIAC’s main sources of income: membership dues, Government Grants, and Medical Laboratories Sponsorships. The Annual Conference had never turned in a profit, and it was by far the biggest expense in the budget, so the Office of the President of CMIAC decided that the 8th Annual Conference and the 50th Anniversary celebrations would be postponed.
This is where we came in. During our initial approach and research we looked for alternatives to host the celebrations, fund the Annual Conference, and turn in a profit. During our first talks, Big Pharma did not express interest in sponsoring a digital conference as they did not see any potential in it.
So we came up with our “Oyster Fork” Strategy. Our main tine would be the professionalisation of CMIAC’s Brand; our second tine would be the creation of a M2M platform capable of producing, hosting, and transmitting the Congress and adjacent celebrations; the third tine would be the set of strategies, campaigns, and actions that would allow us to capitalise the new platform and brand. Our “Oyster Fork” allowed us to rescue the Conference, host the Anniversary Celebrations, turn in a profit, and secure sponsorships and alliances for the years to come.
In order to strengthen the brand’s credibility we acquired ”.org” domains, alongside newly
designed responsive webpages. This came along with a fresh set of branded stationery, and newly minted “.org” email addresses. We chose to create an email address per Office in order to minimise the friction at the end of the one year terms. Having an “Office of the President” address instead of a “John Doe, president” address would ensure that CMIAC would need no outside help in order to transition email accounts.
designed responsive webpages. This came along with a fresh set of branded stationery, and newly minted “.org” email addresses. We chose to create an email address per Office in order to minimise the friction at the end of the one year terms. Having an “Office of the President” address instead of a “John Doe, president” address would ensure that CMIAC would need no outside help in order to transition email accounts.
Furthermore, we chose to integrate Microsoft Word directly into their webpage dashboard, so they could write, edit and upload blog posts. This greatly simplified the older process that required sending the blog posts to the aforementioned “Design Studio” for upload, process that involved a monthly retainer fee.
This, in a nutshell, was one of the main achievements of our project. Empowering CMIAC to take control of their own brand and web presence, while demystifying technology and purging leeches.
Platform
For our second tine we created a platform that would allow CMIAC to host, broadcast, store, and distribute their weekly conference cycles. In addition to serving as the backbone for the development of a digital Conference. The platform was created by integrating pre-existing solutions with our own proprietary developments. This allowed us, for example, to eliminate storage costs. In order to simplify the platform we chose to integrate with Zoom, as CMIAC was already using the App to host its weekly conferences. This allows CMIAC to use its own equipment to record, and with the guidance of our user manuals, we future proofed the project so both physical and remote talks can be easily uploaded.
Our development allowed fellows in good standing to access the video Archive of Weekly
Conferences, plus offering access to non fellow for a monthly fee, generating a new source of income. We also consulted during negotiations with Big Pharma to offer live advertisements during the conferences, in-video ads within the archive, and sponsoring exclusive talks. This generated a second income flux.
Additionally, once the "New Normal” (whatever that means) takes hold, we will empower the Fellows, by allowing them to allot their time as they please by offering a Hybrid modality.
Accessing conferences remotely, physically or asynchronously “On Demand”. We completely removed the need to be physically present, opening up the Weekly Meetings to new remote Fellows, and local participants with a tight schedule, or a distaste for conmute times.
Additionally, we can monitor who’s fulfilling the required hours remotely before requesting their certificates, limiting farming credited hours, and saving CMIAC academic fees in emitted certificates.
