I just returned from ISUOG 2005 in Vancouver.  For those of you who don't know ISUOG is an international ultrasound conference. 

I thought that I was going to make it to some of the lectures but I spent most of my time meeting with various vendors and discussing their education needs. 

There is a lot of interest among all of the companies regarding education right now.

The graph below shows why this is becoming such an issue.  The purple line on the graph below represents the Average Sonographer's Ability plotted over time.  It shows a steady and consistent improvement.  But the blue line represents the rate of technological advancements in ultrasound.  We can see that the rate of ability is not accelerating at the same rate as the technology.
 

This is the result of major advancements in ultrasound technologies but little innovation in regards to how customers are taught.  Think about it?  Is there much done in customer education today that wasn't possible 30 years ago?  The answer is no.

The good news is that this is starting to change.  I spoke to several respected Doctors who said that the multimedia training they had received had been very beneficial in helping them understand their ultrasound system.  Many more were interested in getting that training for their system.  Better yet, many of the manufacturers are beginning to realize that this is an issue and are ready to take significant steps to improve the education resources that are available.

We hope to be able to create a common platform for ultrasound education where we can take the advancements made by leaders in the ultrasound field and present them in a way that makes it possible for doctors and sonographers of all abilities to implement them.

I left ISUOG with the feeling that most participants were going to leave the conference feeling overwhelmed by how much they weren't able to do.  Hopefully in future years we will be able to change this.  We want to create an learning process where users can leave these conferences feeling empowered to implement a significant portion of what they have learned.

Just last week we released updates to the GE Voluson 730 Expert and Pro 3D/4D and Advanced Features tutorials. This represents a significant milestone for Blue Mango Multimedia. Over the past month we have released training for 3 ultrasound machines (the Expert, Pro and the Philips HD3 system) at or before the product launch date. To our knowledge, the level of training available in the Blue Mango Learning System has never been available in conjunction with a product launch.

The GE Voluson 730 releases are exciting for another reason.

One of the key benefits of the Blue Mango Learning System (BMLS) is the learning model it supports. Studies have shown that the average attention span hovers somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. The BMLS focuses on creating e-learning modules that take no more than 15 minutes. In fact most of our lessons take under 10 minutes.

Why do this? Because we believe that we should deliver information in a form that is most easily consumed. If a training course consists of three separate one-hour videos the user has to block out three separate one hour blocks. If they are interrupted halfway through they may have to start over. If we take that same 3 hours of content and divide it into twelve individual 15-minute segments, the user has much more flexibility in how they will consume that information. If they have an hour block they can go through four modules. If they have a 15 minute break at lunch they can review a single lesson.