The purpose of the BLI's CME/CE Program is to help improve patient care and patient outcomes by:

1. providing physicians with continuing medical education activities designed to improve their knowledge, competence and performance in diagnosis and treatment of patients.
2. providing pharmacists with continuing education activities designed to improve their knowledge in accordance with the ”Scope of Contemporary Pharmacy Practice: Roles, Responsibilities, and Functions of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians”; published by the Council on Credentialing Pharmacy in February 2009.
3. providing nurses and other allied healthcare professionals with continuing education as it relates to cancer to improve their knowledge.
4. facilitating learners in the development and implementation of their own individual strategies to close identified gaps in their professional practices.
5. providing learners with continuing educational content that is evidence-based, fair balanced, scientifically objective, references best practices as indicated in peer reviewed published data and other statistics, and is free of any commercial bias.
6. producing change in learner behavior—or to validate current behaviors—consistent with best practices using educational outcomes measures as metrics.

Currently: BLI is currently an ACCME-accredited provider of continuing education for physicians. For the past several years BLI has focused mainly on cancer continuing education and has been preparing for comprehensive expansion of its educational interventions into other therapeutic areas and for other healthcare professionals in 2011.

2011: BLI now routinely develops CME/CE for physicians, pharmacists, nurses and other allied healthcare professionals involved in the treatment, care and management of patients with diseases other than cancer, including diseases involving the skin, infectious disease, the cardiovascular, endocrine and central nervous systems, immune, pulmonary, and also diseases of the respiratory, hepatic, gynecologic and genito/urinary systems. In July 2011, BLI expects to become an ACPE-accredited provider of continuing education for pharmacists. BLI submitted its application to ACPE in January 2011. Similarly, BLI expects to become an ANCC-accredited provider of continuing education for nurses in December 2011. BLI submitted its initial application to ACPE in April 2011.

1. Live activities, including full-day courses, symposia, workshops and virtual, live, Web-based activities on the Internet.
2. Home-study, Internet-enduring material activities, including print, CD-ROM and DVDs, Internet CE, and resource kits. (resource kits may include slide compendia, practical application tools, clinical cases and patient tools.)

Because the BLI understands the complex environment of clinicians' practices and their mindset in which each of their patients is unique and requires the pharmacists and other healthcare professionals to devise a unique treatment plan, our educational activities focus on equipping learners with knowledge and options for the application of patient care strategy rather than dictating inflexible recommendations. Thus, whenever possible, our learning formats utilize adult learning principles, are highly interactive, including patient case-study-based learning, and debates by experts on controversial relevant practice issues. In addition, BLI activities endeavor to incorporate other interactive discussions into activities in order to optimize learner involvement. And whenever possible, BLI utilizes formats that incorporate multiple exposures of learners to the same content through the use of enduring materials derived from live events.

1. Measurement of improvement in performance-in-practice are determined by responses to telephone interviews conducted approximately three to four months post-activity and focused on key changes in behavior anticipated by the activity's planners and identified by the learners in written statements on the post-activity Evaluation Forms. Additional follow-up outcomes measurements via on-line Web surveys of past BLI educational activity participants help determine retention of newly acquired knowledge, competence or changed practice behaviors which can be used in the assessment of Practice Gaps in the BLI's planning process.
2. Measurements of improvement in knowledge: Specific, detailed questions are used on each post-activity Evaluation Form and measure learner commitment to behavioral change as anticipated by planners. Hand-held, interactive Audience Response System (ARS) devices are used pre- and post-activity, and instant feedback is projected on the screen during all BLI live courses.
3. Measurements of improvement in competence are measured either by responses to questions associated with case studies administered at the conclusion of the activity or through response to a paired-question approach using ARS in which the learner is queried on application of knowledge and competence to patient scenarios prior to and subsequent to the learning experience.
4. All of the above-mentioned techniques help BLI determine whether the learner is able to develop strategies to incorporate new knowledge or skills into existing practice.
5. When either knowledge, competence and/or learner performance-in-practice are not adequately improved as measured by outcomes questionnaires and or qualitative interviews of learners the barriers that prevented them from being implemented are identified so that more effective future activities can be developed and implemented.
6. When designated, improvement in patient outcomes will be assessed through the observational findings of learners based on their patients that present with relevant medical problems in the ensuing time between the questionnaire and the activity.
7. General learner satisfaction is measured for all elective metrics in terms of learner response to post–activity evaluation questions relating to achievement of educational objectives, the quality of the faculty, the ability of the activity to address learners needs for participating in the activity, in their experience of whether the activity was presented without commercial bias.

The BLI staff analyzes all assessments and evaluations and presents their results to management to assure that each educational activity is consistent with the CME/CE mission, and, to make improvements to the CME/CE program on an ongoing basis.