Developments in CEPD’s information technology have grown substantially in the past year. The integrated events management and registration system (EvMS) has been transformed into a cloud application which is being marketed to other Canadian CE departments. It’s now in use by other Faculties of Medicine in Canada, including the University of Toronto, who work collaboratively on determining the feature set and general direction of future growth, based on shared experience in this unique business/medical/educational niche. Work with these other universities has paid dividends as there are now more users who can provide insights and fresh approaches.
A second achievement this year was the launch of a new application and processes geared towards providing credit card processing services. Initially, this was developed to meet our requirements for providing online registrants with a straightforward way to pay online. Finding commercial solutions overly intrusive, our IT department designed a standalone credit card processing application service that works alongside with, but independently from, our online registration system. Two other CE Offices in Canada now use this credit card system. It is our hope to further enhance this product and market it to other university departments who wish to integrate credit card processing into their systems.
Due to our advances in Social Media we have adopted a policy that we will connect with current and future learners in the ways that they expect and are accustomed to. A great deal of our printed and electronic matter now contains links to these online communities (Twitter and Facebook) and the importance of these streams of communication to our business is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years.
Next year there are many other initiatives planned, including online services to support individualized learning, providing event search and registration capabilities for Android and iPhone devices, and releasing a new version of our online application for sponsorship, which has allowed us to dramatically increase the number of events that can accredit while simultaneously maximizing the educational quality of each of those events.