Virtual conference growth in optometry

Online optometry forum ODWire recently announced that it will be hosting a virtual conference next month. Dubbed CEWire, the event provides attendees with 30 hours of COPE-approved credit for $99 as well as a virtual exhibit hall offering interaction with vendors. ODWire plans to donate profits from the conference to charity.

The event is scheduled May 16-17; however, attendees are able to view the lectures at any time up to 90 days later.

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Says ODWire cofounder Paul Farkas, OD, FAAO: “Our goal is to produce the kind of show that we would want to attend, free of constraints like turning a profit or having very narrow subject tracks or topics.”

Online CE more accepted

ODWire cofounder Adam Farkas, MD, has taken online CME for many years, and he says that the idea of using ODWire’s online platform for optometric CE has been percolating for at least a decade.

“There wasn’t a political framework to do this earlier because states weren’t accepting online CE,” he says. “We felt that a tipping point has been reached for it now to be worthwhile for us to give it a try.”

Both Dr. Paul Farkas and Dr. Adam Farkas wanted to be able to saturate attendees’ CE requirements for the year.

“The idea is that we wanted to do a virtual conference in a big way,” says Dr. Adam Farkas, who manages the technical portion of ODWire. “We wanted to give people the maximum amount of choice. There’s nothing more infuriating with online CE than sitting through courses you don’t want to take. We are offering an overwhelming amount of CE as cheaply as possible with the highest quality. We spared no expense. We got the best speakers we could, paying their standard rates like they would receive at a standard CE conference. We’re resubmitting all of their materials to COPE, which is a costly endeavor.”

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