Cost-Efficient Medical Education: An Innovative Approach to Creating Educational Products

Background Cost is a barrier to creating educational resources, and new educational initiatives are often limited in distribution. Medical training programs must develop strategies to create and implement cost-effective educational programming. Objective We developed high-quality medical programming in procedural instruction with efficient economics, reaching the most trainees at the lowest cost. Methods The Just-In-Time online procedural program was developed at the University of Toronto in Canada, aiming to teach thoracentesis, paracentesis, and lumbar puncture skills to internal medicine trainees. Commercial vendors quoted between CAD $50,000 and $100,000 to create 3 comprehensive e-learning procedural modules—a cost that was prohibitive. Modules were therefore developed internally, utilizing 4 principles aimed at decreasing costs while creating efficiencies: targeting talent, finding value abroad, open source expansion, and extrapolating efficiency. Results Procedural modules for thoracentesis, paracentesis, and lumbar puncture were created for a total cost of CAD $1,200, less than 3% of the anticipated cost in utilizing traditional commercial vendors. From November 2016 until October 2018, 1800 online instructional sessions have occurred, with over 3600 pageviews of content utilized. While half of the instructional sessions occurred within the city of Toronto, utilization was documented in 10 other cities across Canada. Conclusions The Just-in-Time online instructional program successfully created 3 procedural modules at a fraction of the anticipated cost and appeared acceptable to residents based on website utilization.