Allocate sponsorship
Allocation of financial sponsorship
CMEPEDIA allocates financial sponsorship fairly, automatically, and transparently.
CMEPEDIA offers free learning opportunities, but some services involve a fee. These include paid educational activities and the annual Premium subscription, which enables healthcare professionals to maintain a learning portfolio for professional re-licensing.
Some institutions have education budgets and may fund these services for their healthcare professionals. However, many learners must pay for continuing education themselves. In India, individuals cannot claim a personal tax refund for these professional development expenses. For learners with limited financial means, paid education and portfolio services may therefore remain unaffordable.
CMEPEDIA allows these learners to request financial sponsorship for paid educational activities and premium subscriptions.
Financial sponsorship enables learners to access paid educational activities without paying the course fee themselves.
Sponsorship is first allocated to users who have requested sponsorship for a paid course. This directs funding to learners who have already expressed interest in a particular course and avoids allocating sponsored access to users who may not need or want it.
Financial sponsorship is allocated through an automated system designed to distribute available funding fairly and benefit as many healthcare professionals as possible.
The system applies the following principles:
- Among courses requested for funding, the system prioritises the lowest-priced course so that the available funds can benefit more learners
- Each user receives sponsorship for one course before the system considers another.
- Once the system fulfils funding requests, it may allocate any remaining sponsorship amount to healthcare professionals whose stated learning interests align with the available course topics and who have outstanding professional re-licensing requirements.
- Within both groups, priority is given to learners working in lower-resource settings, followed by those in higher-resource settings.
CMEPEDIA employees cannot manually select individual recipients or influence the order of allocation. The process is automated to reduce the possibility of bias.
Users who wish to be considered for financial sponsorship should submit requests for funding on CMEPEDIA.
When a user receives sponsorship for a paid course, they are encouraged to begin the course within one month. If they do not begin within this period, the sponsorship may be reassigned to another eligible learner. Users will be notified before this happens.
Users may decline a sponsored course if it is irrelevant, duplicates previous learning, or does not support their professional development or re-licensing needs. CMEPEDIA will then reassign the sponsorship to another learner.
Premium subscription fees help support CMEPEDIA’s financial sustainability. Financial sponsorship may also be used to provide learners with access to a premium subscription and its learning-portfolio services.
Sponsorship of premium subscriptions follows the same allocation principles as sponsorship of paid courses. Priority is given to users who have requested funding for a premium subscription. Among these users, preference is given to those working in lower-resource healthcare settings.
This ensures sponsored premium access goes to users who have expressed interest in the service and are likely to benefit from financial support.
Sponsors may specify the amount of funding they wish to provide or the number of healthcare professionals they wish to support. However, they cannot select individual recipients or influence how recipients are chosen.
CMEPEDIA does not share healthcare professionals’ personal information with sponsors. Sponsorship information is reported only in an aggregated form, in accordance with applicable privacy and accreditation requirements.
Sponsors receive an invoice for the sponsorship provided. After allocating or using the funds, they may also receive an aggregated report explaining how the sponsorship was applied. The report includes no personally identifiable learner information.
Users can record their sponsorship preferences in their profiles, including whether they are willing to accept funding from particular sponsor categories.
CMEPEDIA discloses the name of each sponsoring organisation and the nature of its support to learners in accordance with applicable accreditation requirements.
