World Medical Association Forms Strategic Partnership to Provide Continuing Medical Education Online

The World Medical Association (WMA) is helping accelerate the learning of physicians to improve healthcare standards worldwide through its strategic partnership with the World Continuing Education Alliance (WCEA).

The WCEA is a leading global provider of specialist continuing education platforms that also works in partnership with the International Council of Nurses and other “world” associations in different sectors. This partnership will see the rollout of a system that will improve the dissemination of education to physicians worldwide through a truly global continuing education network – the first of its kind.

“With an umbrella membership of over 10M physicians, the WMA seeks to influence medical ethics, human rights and equal access to medical education around the world,” said Dr. Otmar Kloiber, WMA´s Secretary General. “Online education provides a unique opportunity to connect the top educators with physicians improving knowledge and healthcare regardless of geographical location”.

Medical professionals benefit from being able to access increasing volumes of high quality courses from a single online platform. This will allow them to expand their skill sets and knowledge to continually improve patient care. In many cases these courses also count towards the legislated learning requirements imposed on professionals in order to renew their licenses to practice.

As WCEA Founder, Graham Hellier MBE explains, “Educators want to educate, they do not want to have to deal with software platforms, global license compliance, marketing their courses and making sales tax payments in each country their education is sold. The WMA service makes it extremely easy for educators to take their content to the far corners of the globe giving their knowledge and expertise a reach that was previously unattainable”.

Another exciting aspect, and an important consideration for the WMA when they entered into the partnership, is to provide physicians in developing nations with access to world class education. Educators that charge for their courses are requested to allow them to be distributed to physicians in developing nations for free. The WMA initiative will therefore help to bridge the gap between high and low resource countries.