A Policy Proposal for Utilizing Digital Technology in Continuous Medical Education Based on the Consensus Statement of the Middle East, Africa, and Russia Region Expert Group Meeting (Preprint)
Authors: Alabbood Majid , Hegazy Ahmed , Hassan Amr , Picton Anthony , Evgeny Averin , Farhat Fadi , Saddik Fekraoui Boubekeur , De Lorenzo Filippo , Ovsyannikov Konstantin , Braham Marouen , Meergans Matthias , Aljarallah Salman , Demirci Umut , Tarif Rasha 
Published: November 2022

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Digital technology is the use of software, application, or electronic tools, systems, devices, and resources to generate, store, process, or forward data in numerical format. Digital technology and health solutions have redefined patient care and medical education especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of digital technology on healthcare includes improvement of diagnostic accuracy and access to health information, streamlined healthcare services, and advancement of personalized care and patient engagement. In addition, digital technology has introduced various tools in medical education and enabled limitless potential for e-learning and assessment. Merck medical affairs in partnership with digital experts in the Middle East, Africa, and Russia region (Partnership and Exchange for Tomorrow’s Realities Digital International Experts with Merck) conducted an asynchronous virtual meeting. The objective of this virtual expert group meeting was to assess how healthcare professionals and digital thought leaders in the Middle East, Africa, and Russia region perceive the utilization of digital technology in continuous medical education. After intensifying the partnership with an expert panel of digital thought leaders in the Middle East, Africa, and Russia region, a virtual asynchronous advisory board of 19 advisors was established and an insights management platform was used to collect feedback and gather insights from the experts. Over 18-days of virtual exchange, 36 open-ended, multiple-choice, and annotated questions were sequentially released and discussed in five categories including the partnership between digital thought leaders and pharma companies, the format/quality-criteria for continuous medical education, the engagement during continuous medical education, multichannel integration, and the participants’ composition/experience/mapping. Following a Delphi method, advisors reached a consensus on the expected themes, question items, and tools to be covered in the digital expert group. The consensus points discussed during this online session endorsed actionable recommendations to create a structured regional network or forum for digital thought leaders, provide interactive and user-friendly digital platforms and flexible channels capable of real-time translation for doctor-patient communication, create hybrid interactive medical education sessions upgraded and transformed by digital technology for health care professionals, public awareness and patient education, and integrate social media and video conference platforms for medical virtual events. This online session will set the roadmap for a policy proposal on leveraging the use of digital solutions in individualized healthcare professional education, telemedicine, peer-to-peer communication, personalized patient support and training, and big data to address digital health aspects.