Johns Hopkins School of Medicine develops RAALI for healthcare providers

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the nation's leading medical school recipient of research funds from the National Institutes of Health and a recognized center for "Best Practices" by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), discussed the development of a unique medical education initiative - the Rheumatoid Arthritis Action Lab Initiative (RAALI) - to give healthcare providers connectivity to much-needed information on rheumatoid arthritis. RAALI was developed in collaboration with Medikly and 2digiti, leading innovators in enabling social learning among healthcare providers.

“Our collaboration with Medikly and 2digiti demonstrates the value of partnering with leading-edge companies to leverage novel social learning tools and reinvent CME.”

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory disease that causes pain, swelling, stiffness, and loss of function in the joints. According to the Centers for Disease Control, some 37 million adults in the United States have been diagnosed with some form of arthritis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or gout. In 2003, the total cost attributed to arthritis and other rheumatic conditions in the United States was $128 billion, up from $86.2 billion dollars in 1997. By 2030, an estimated 67 million Americans ages 18 or older are projected to have doctor-diagnosed arthritis.

"Rheumatologists are faced with a daunting challenge: they must stay up-to-date on new technologies, therapeutic agents, measures of quality, and new models of patient care in the field of rheumatoid arthritis. RAALI will give healthcare provides a much-needed resource for expanding their knowledge and sharing their real-world expertise with their peers," said Victor Marrow, PhD, Executive Director, Office of Funded Programs, Continuing Medical Education, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our collaboration with Medikly and 2digiti demonstrates the value of partnering with leading-edge companies to leverage novel social learning tools and reinvent CME."

The Johns Hopkins collaboration with Medikly and 2digiti will provide healthcare professionals with instant access to Medikly's social learning tools that include videos, blogs, wikis, groups, forums, whiteboards, microblogs, online webinars and classrooms, as well as 2digiti's text messaging tools. Together, these tools will give healthcare providers an integrated educational platform that allows them to learn socially, evaluate their own progress, then measure and validate improvements in patient care and outcomes.

"Even before healthcare reform, the ability to measure patient outcomes was considered essential to raising the standard of medical care. RAALI gives physicians the tools not only to measure their educational progress, but to assess its impact on their patients," added Dr. Marrow. "We expect the RA treatment community and medical institutions will rapidly adopt RAALI's unique combination of 'just-in-time' learning resources and comprehensive suite of social learning tools."