President's Column
Read monthly updates from AAN President Carlayne E. Jackson, MD, FAAN, to learn about Academy news and action on issues important to the neurology profession and patients.
November 2023
We Are Investing in Delivering Greater Value to You—Our AAN Members
Your Academy continues to focus on delivering greater value to our members. One way we are doing this is by making investments in technology that will improve the online member experience—improvements that are based on hearing directly from you about your expectations and preferences, identifying gaps in our offerings, and ensuring we continue to meet your needs.
These exciting investments are anchored to the AAN’s new education vision, which calls for content that is easy to find, easy to use, and tailored to the user. They contribute to this vision in overarching ways—such as making sure you can find all of our resources on a topic with a quick search—as well as in ways that just make your life a little easier, like being able to start an education course on your phone and finish it on your tablet.
To get to this point, we worked with a leading continuing education strategy consultant to assess the market, collect information from interviews with our leaders, surveys of our members, as well as from our data on which products are resonating with members now.
We are doubling down and prioritizing being a digital-first organization. As we visit your clinics and offices around the world, we’ve heard a clear message about the importance of delivering content to you in short, digestible bites that are easier to take in during the precious free moments in your busy day—in addition to the high-quality in-depth content we’ve always delivered. We’re aiming to provide a menu of options. Just as sometimes you’re grabbing a snack on the run and other times you can linger over a full meal—sometimes you simply want to watch a quick video on a new therapy, while other times you can lean back with an hourlong course on advances in a topic outside your area of expertise.
I want to give you an overview of what is in store for you as a member as we continue to improve your online experiences. As always, your interest and engagement with the AAN remain our top priority.
We’ve just launched a new system for managing all of our online education offerings. Among the many new features, I think you will appreciate the improved search functionality; enhanced video capabilities, including automatic captioning and ability to bookmark videos; and the ability to start a course on one device and pick up right where you left off when you go to another device.
Next spring, we will launch a new customer relationship management system that will allow the AAN to deliver a more personalized experience to you on our website, through emails we send to you, and in many other ways. For example, we can provide suggestions for education offerings based on your practice and interests. Don’t forget to log in to AAN.com so you can see information that’s of most interest to you—right now and to a much greater extent coming soon!
We heard your feedback on the sometimes-clunky experience with our online conference platform. This summer we debuted a new platform for the Summer Conference that we will continue to improve for our conferences going forward. The new platform integrates the mobile and online platform experiences, providing a seamless experience for attendees.
For our Neurology® family of journals, we are investing in a best-in-class platform that will allow us to pull together all the articles on a topic from any journal, along with related media, such as podcasts, blogs, and survey results. These resource centers will bring together information on diseases and other topics, such as global health, emerging trends, and health disparities.
One set of digital-first offerings we have invested in for years are our great podcasts—we’re issuing eight each week wherever you get your podcasts through Neurology, Neurology Minute™, Neurology Today®, and Brain & Life®. Soon, Continuum® Audio, one of our most invaluable tools for busy neurologists, will be even easier to access as a podcast.
We are exploring a larger initiative to create a universal taxonomy and upgraded search function across the AAN’s content. While this would be a significant effort and investment, we believe that the benefit of allowing members to quickly and easily find the relevant information will be well worth the effort.
We are also jumping on the digital-first bandwagon with this publication. Next month will be our last print issue, but we will continue to deliver the latest highlights from the AAN to you twice a month in your AANe-news™ email newsletter, or you can find them on AAN.com. If you aren’t checking out AANe-news, you should take a look. It covers what you need to know from the Academy, straight to your inbox.
Finally, I am transitioning this column into a shorter format that you can take in more quickly each month—60-second videos where I’ll be highlighting the latest updates on your Academy. In fact, this month I’m serving up both the snack and the full meal! Please see my first President’s Spotlight video below!
Carlayne E. Jackson, MD, FAAN
President, AAN
cjackson@aan.com
@CarlayneJackson on Twitter