Mizen - Information Systems

Refresher Course Lectures Series (RCLS)

Each year at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists(ASA) a series of seminars are presented to bring Anesthesiologists up to date on current research and practice protocols. The ability to document the results of 100+ lectures in electronic form for later reference was founded by Dr. Keith Ruskin, M.D. of Yale Medical School. Mizen & Associates, Inc. refined Dr. Ruskin's initiative to a comprehensive electronic collection of materials for daily use and reference by ASA members.

Implementation

Any one individual could not attend all sessions. The need was defined to create a post session electronic "take away" for the participants. Mizen & Associates, Inc. utilized the Acrobat® pdf format to provide a cross platform CD-ROM with all of the sessions in a searchable archive that can be played back on any computer system or available for download from the ASA web site based on case topic or author.

in 2002, the ASA coordinated efforts by Marathon Multimedia of Minnesota & Mizen & Associates Inc. to create a remote login site for the discussion leaders to prepare a seven page session summary. These files were formatted and prepared in pdf format by Mizen & Associates, Inc. to create a collection, menu, and interface that provides access to cases based on medical situation, author, or session title. The same files were uploaded to Worzalla Printing to prepare 35,000 copies of the efforts in paper form using the pdf files are source material for the print production process

Lessons Learned

Pre-testing of the pdf format with Worzalla was a critical success factor. It is easy to create a "pdf file" but one that will work effortlessly in either electronic or print form requires additional considerations. These "considerations" were not significant for electronic presentation but subtle enough to create potential issues if not anticipated in advance of print production.