EBAC®

European Board for Accreditation of
Continuing Education for Health Professionals

FAQs

EBAC® is an independent non-governmental accrediting body under control of a non-profit, charitable foundation, which has no statutory relations to any scientific, professional, political, commercial or other organization or association of organizations.

EBAC® endorses, and accredits according to the International Academy for CPD Accreditation (IACPDA) “Standards for Substantive Equivalency between CPD/CME Accreditation Systems”

Providers need to be a legal entity and not under the influence of commercial interests (according to the IACPDA definition), and have the logistic resources to manage the roles and responsibilities of a provider, as outlined in applicable EBAC documents, including appointment of a “course director” for each of their educational activities.

All providers who want to cooperate with EBAC® first need to be approved by EBAC®. To access the application form and for more information, please visit the EBAC® website (ebac-cme.org) under “Submit your registration”.

EBAC® offers both types of accreditation: activity accreditation as well as provider accreditation. To access the application form and for more information, please visit the EBAC website (ebac-cme.org) under “Submit your registration” and the document “Terms and Conditions” under “EBAC Basic Documents”. EBAC accredited providers document all their activities in the EBAC® management system prior to the start/launch of the activity.

EBAC®

  • accredits independent and effective continuing education in the health professions, i.e. for physicians, nurses, allied professions, and interprofessional teams, (referred to as CE).
  • endorses, and accredits according to, the International Academy for CPD Accreditation (IACPDA) “Standards for Substantive Equivalency between CME/CPD Accreditation Systems”.

EBAC® accredits

  • webinars (scheduled educational meetings with virtual attendance)
  • on-site in person educational activity (scheduled educational meeting with on-site in person attendance)
  • hybrid educational activity (scheduled educational meeting with on-site in person attendance and simultaneous live stream)
  • online enduring material (educational material available online for self-directed learning, e.g. video, podcast etc.)
  • articles/text (online or in print media)
  • AEP (“Accredited Educational Program”, an educational activity taking place in the breaks of e.g. a congress)

EBAC® has established tracking as universal method for proof of participation in all e-learning activities, what may result in accreditation of content independent of allocation of CE credits. This offers max freedom of choice to learners, and to design educational activities to providers, respectively. Accreditation of e-learning material is valid for 2 years, incl. extended offers like “on demand” versions etc.

Then the old rules still apply: You have to define the educational unit (minimum length of stand-alone online education 10 minutes) and participants have to answer multiple choice questions to prove participation.

Yes, evaluation by participants is mandatory in the EBAC® system. Upon accreditation of your activity you receive a link and a barcode leading to your activity related web-based evaluation form to be filled by participants as last part of the program. Thus, “EBAC evaluation” is the mandatory last part of each accredited activity.

Once you have communicated the total number of participants to EBAC you will receive the evaluation results (this has replaced the former “event report”)

EBAC® accredits

  • international CE activities in medicine
  • national CE activities in medicine with international participation. In this case EBAC® accreditation is not competitive but rather subsidiary to national accreditation systems, targeting the participants from foreign countries,
  • national CE activities in medicine in case that a national accreditation authority does not exist or does not provide accreditation services.

EBAC is a Europe-based accrediting body, but serves clients all over the world as well as clients producing content for a global audience. Since EBAC accreditation is subsidiary to accreditation by national accreditation systems, applying in parallel for national accreditation maybe necessary to meet the needs of participants from the host country. Furthermore, EBAC holds agreements on mutual recognition of substantive equivalency with the US Accreditation Council for CME (ACCME) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and thus does not accredit in-person meetings in the US and Canada, respectively.

The entire accreditation process takes place online through services.ebac-cme.org

Definitely yes, and this relates to activity accreditation as well as to the documentation process in provider accreditation. CME accreditation for educational activities will only be granted before they have started or been launched online, respectively. With this regard EBAC® recommends to have an application fully completed 6 weeks prior to when the activity is going to start.

Yes, but only as long as funding complies with the principles outlined in the applicable EBAC® documents, based on the IACPDA Consensus Statement for Independence and Funding of CME/CPD.

EBAC® has a time-based credit system (60 minutes = 1 credit/point). However, since national credit/point calculation systems vary, EBAC® primarily shows effective education time on its certificates. More information can be found in the EBAC document “EBAC CE credit/point system”

No. EBAC®, as other major accrediting bodies, accepts funding of accredited continuing education (CE) by commercial supporters. Financial support has to be made transparent to participants under strictly defined conditions (please refer to EBAC® document “EBAC Rules for Commercial Support”) to avoid potential promotional side effects. Further to this commercial supporters cannot have any role in accredited CE, and this definitely includes management of participants and participations (please refer to the 2020 International Academy for CPD Accreditation (IACPDA) “Standards for Substantive Equivalency between CPD/CME Accreditation Systems“, which state in Standard 2.1 I …. “that commercial interests have no influence, control, or involvement with … any other aspect of the provision or evaluation of accredited education“).

However, giving commercial supporters the opportunity to interact with participants in accredited live in person meetings has for long been accepted by accrediting bodies under certain conditions. These include strict separation of education and promotion, e.g. distribution of promotional material only outside of the room, in which education takes place, and personal contact between representatives of commercial supporters and participants only during the breaks, often restricted to specially designated exhibition areas, and at the sole discretion of participants, deciding onsite on whom to meet. To summarize, the current procedure for live in-person meetings has been characterized by that

  • the provider has never played an active role in establishing contacts between individual participants and industry reps beyond offering a general opportunity to meet (e.g. exhibition area)
  • contacts between participants and commercial entities have never occurred prior or during, but only after the CE activity, and
  • the direction of action has always been from participant to commercial funder and not vice versa.

Thus, this procedure has complied with requirements accrediting bodies have set forth as well as the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

In analogy to the procedures applied in live in-person CE EBAC has defined for online education:

  • Funding by commercial entities has to be made transparent according to the rules outlined in the document “EBAC Rules for Commercial Support”
  • EBAC® considers as end of an educational activity delivered online when participants have completed the online EBAC® evaluation form
  • Following completion of the online EBAC® evaluation form, providers may display contact data of commercial supporters to facilitate contacts between participants and funders at the discretion of participants.

“Sponsors are only allowed to distribute the program as designed by the provider.” Does “program” refer to the actual education itself or is it referring to invitations or announcements about a program launch?

This statement relates to any invitational activity and does not only refer to content but also to program layout of the accredited activity.

It does not make any statement on the ways how the information is disseminated. Thus, you as supporter may e.g. link on the webpage of the provider (not vice versa) or distribute it by (post) mail etc. as long as the entire program is made available to the addressee.