Videotaping Medical Lectures

If you are in the medical field, you are very aware of CME (continuing medical education). In order to receive your CME credit, you have to attend medical lectures. These lectures can take place at a small meetings within your region or at a very large annual meeting held at a location that is attractive for the whole family. These meetings offer so much information. Have you ever attended a medical conference where you were torn between attending session A, versus session C? I think many of us have been in that situation.

The solution: videotaping medical lectures or streaming them live or archived. As simple as it sounds, from a production company’s stand point, there is a lot of planning that goes into it, whether it is a big or small event. Of course, there are the obvious things like getting permission from each speaker to videotape them. Even though that sounds easy, do you know how hard it can be to get a doctor’s approval? These people are very busy.
Then we move to looking into the location facility. We need to speak with the AV department at the facility and discuss lighting, sound, internet connections and camera placement at the meeting space.

Assuming all this goes well, you are ready to start rolling the cameras, right? Wrong. You need to plan for how and where the viewers will go in order to watch the medical lectures. Another question that needs to be answered would be, are you going to be transferring the footage to DVD for sale, will you only stream, or both? How will you give the correct doctor the CME credit?
All of this can be challenging but is well worth the effort.

What are some of the benefits of videotaping a medical lecture?
1. Allows a participant to see multiple lectures held at the same time
2. Gives a person unable to attend access to the information
3. Saves money on airfare, hotel because a person can watch online
4. Medical lectures can be put in a keyword searchable database
5. Allows a participant who didn’t follow a particular point to pause and replay the video, or pause and consult another source

Let us know how you have benefited from the videotaping of medical lectures.