In the space of 2 years, Read by QxMD has enabled ANZCA Library to transform the way we engage with our predominantly remote user base, and helped alleviate information overload for anaesthetists throughout Australia and New Zealand.
The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) is the professional organisation for around 6,400 specialist anaesthetists (fellows) and 1,500 anaesthetists in training (trainees). It includes the Faculty of Pain Medicine and is responsible for the training, examination and specialist accreditation of anaesthetists and pain medicine specialists and for the standards of clinical practice in Australia and New Zealand.
The ANZCA Library has been providing access to the Read by QxMD app since 2016 and at the time of the launch, there was only one other app being used by the Library, for a small collection of journals through a single publisher. Our tech-savvy anaesthetists had demonstrated their interest early on by being the second highest institutional users of this app in the world. So it was no surprise that the Read app would also be popular.
Fast forward two years, in June 2018, there are more than 1,000 registered ANZCA users of the app, of which 95% had accessed the app within the last month.
Over 5,600 abstracts and 2,500 full-text papers were viewed in a single month. This type of engagement is something most providers can only dream of.
Since the introduction of Read, the ANZCA Library has noted a 30% increase in full-text views of articles — demonstrating greater value for money for the annual journal subscriptions.
With the ANZCA Library run from the Melbourne office, all users are located in hospitals and clinics throughout Australia and New Zealand. The library has high usage but awareness and engagement with the remote users is a continual challenge. However with the Read app, uptake seems to have been mostly driven by word of mouth. It appears any medical professional with an interest in apps knows about Read.
And it is not a hard sell — the user friendly interface is intuitive so we are never required to provide trouble-shooting. We have built a library guide with set-up instructions and value-added features such as campaigns and collections that some users might not explore. Our users love that they can read all the ANZCA Library journals on a mobile device. Our anaesthetists need to stay up-to-date on their specialty and interests so the followed keywords and journals features are very popular. While they can get access to the ANZCA Library full articles in one click, they especially appreciate gaining a broader perspective of articles from journals outside their specialty.
From the library perspective, the Read app has provided us with a number of opportunities to collaborate with and support our Research Unit. The first campaign we ran in Read featured two articles based on a major international research project supported by the ANZCA Research Foundation. It gained immediate interest with 6202 impressions, 885 views (588 abstract/297 paper) and 32 shares…and segued our Research and Clinical Trials Network into using the Collections module to promote other articles of interest to the network. Campaigns and Collections allows us to promote ANZCA research and build a specialist research network sharing hand-selected key articles.
As a valued and trusted subscriber to Read, ANZCA have broadened international relations with the QxMD by investigating the expansion of their specialised medical programs onto the new Learn platform, starting with pain management training for doctors, a very topical subject throughout the world. Initially a consumer of the Read app, we maintain ongoing discussions with QxMD to provide feedback for enhancements from our users, and now we are on the frontier of becoming an education provider to an international audience of 2 million medical professionals.
Written by ANZCA:
Laura Foley — Operations Manager, Knowledge Resources
John Prentice — Library Manager
ANZCA uses Read by QxMD, Institutional Edition to help their users discover practice-changing research that improves patient care and reduces costs.
