SBIR-STTR Award

HealthCare Education Associates proposes to develop and evaluate a state of the science, Web-based education program that provides primary health care providers with the knowledge and skills to effectively respond to the AIDS epidemic among adults aged 50 and over in terms of primary prevention (risk reduction) and secondary prevention (prompt identification and treatment). The education program will target physicians, physicians' assistants, nurses, as well as medical and nursing students and will be accredited for 3 hours of continuing medical and nursing education. The objectives of the program are to increase providers: 1) awareness of the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among adults aged 50 and over; 2) ability to conduct an age-sensitive risk assessment among older patients; 3) ability to discuss risk reduction strategies with at-risk older patients; 4) knowledge and recognition of the clinical manifestations of HIV in older adults; 5) ability to conduct pre- and post-test counseling for older adults; and 6) treatment capabilities of older adults who are HIV positive. During Phase I, a written curriculum will be developed and one module of the curriculum will be converted to a Web-based format. Members of the target audience at four sites will review these. During Phase II, the entire written curriculum will be converted to a Web-based format and evaluated at four sites to determine its effectiveness in achieving objectives. The program is a technologically innovative way to reach a wide spectrum of current and future health care providers. No program such as the one proposed is currently available. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: This is the first commercially available education package for primary health care providers that addresses the specific HIV/AIDS prevention needs of adults aged 50 and over. The market for the proposed educational product is large and includes over 4,000 hospitals (including 5,000 medical residency programs), 125 medical schools, 2,000 schools of nursing, and over 400,000 primary care providers.

Healthcare Education Associates (HCEA proposes to develop and evaluate an interactive online Continuing Medical Education (CME) program that will: 1) enhance primary care practitioners (PCPs) ability to prevent, diagnose, and treat HIV/AIDS in adults aged 50 and over; 2) be more effective than traditional CME programs; and 3) be inexpensively marketed to health care practitioners throughout the U.S. The program will be sponsored for 4+ hours of AMA Category 1 Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit and will be marketed by Medical Directions, Inc. (MDI) via its commercial CME website, The Virtual Lecture Hall. The proposed program will be created in the form of a "Virtual Clinic." This model utilizes the interactive capabilities of the computer to achieve educational efficiency and effectiveness by providing realistic simulation of the practice world. The specific aims of Phase II are to: 1) develop an online CME program based on the curriculum written in Phase I; 2) pilot-test the program; and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of the program in meeting the learning objectives. It is proposed that the design for the Phase II Study will include both immediate and six-month follow-up assessments and a comparison of the online CME program to a traditional CME program presented in a written format in terms of the degree of attainment of the learning objectives and subsequent incorporation of content into the ongoing clinical practice.

Thesaurus Terms:
AIDS education /prevention, HIV infection, Internet, computer assisted instruction, computer system design /evaluation, continuing education, educational resource design /development, medical education, training AIDS /HIV diagnosis, computer simulation, counseling, curriculum, disease /disorder proneness /risk, education evaluation /planning, human old age (65+), interactive multimedia clinical research, human subject