Michael Donoghue, the founder of ConveyPro along with Chris West, is an avid podcast listener. One podcast he regularly streams is "How I Built This." The podcast is hosted by Guy Raz and profiles entrepreneurs, covering how they built their businesses and the challenges they faced.
Donoghue will listen to podcasts during his morning runs and somewhere along the way a valuable idea came to him that forms the basis of the company.
"Podcasts are a great way to consume content while you're doing something else," he said.
He founded the company about two years ago, with ConveyMD serving as a podcast platform serving the medical community. The platform name has since been changed to ConveyMED in order to expand its reach.
What makes ConveyMED somewhat unique in the podcast space is its focus on educational material.
"All licensed health care professionals have to earn a certain number of continuing education hours per year to maintain their license," Donoghue said. "Our thesis is that there's not an easier way to meet that requirement and stay current with your education on behalf of your patients than through mobile audio."
In aiming at educational podcasts, ConveyMED is providing a service that platforms such as Spotify and Apple are not equipped to do.
"They lack compliance. They're limited in their functionality," Donoghue said. "That's why we built ConveyMED."
Donoghue said they work with accredited content providers, such as the University Chicago, the Orthopedic Trauma Association, the Hospital for Special Surgery, and the University of Mississippi. Listeners have to take a pre-test in order to measure current understanding of the content and then they take a post-test after hearing the material.
ConveyMED recently partnered with Pharmacy Podcast Network, the first network of podcasters dedicated to the pharmacy industry. ConveyMED will provide its platform to Pharmacy Podcast Network to allow them to broaden their educational content and to monetize their offerings.
Donoghue said he pictures ConveyMED being used by architects, teachers, and veterinarians — any profession that requires continuing education.
The way that Donoghue describes ConveyMED is as a "mobile education channel." He sees it as a distribution channel for businesses and organizations to tap into.
He doesn't think there's an age cut off for podcasts. Services, such as ConveyMED, represent the wave of the future.
"I'm a person who's over 50 — I listen to podcasts all the time," Donoghue said. "If you look at the data, the health care profession is rapidly evolving to being dominant on millennials and Gen Z. Our target audience is not a 65-year-old physician who's been in practice for 40 years and gets all of his or her education from reading a journal. Young clinicians don't do that. They want it on their mobile device."
ConveyPro raised money via the local venture capital firm MB Venture Partners. The platform currently has 170 podcasts.
Donoghue said that the plan is to stay in educational podcasting.
"Our mission is to elevate podcasting as a medium for professional education," he said. "We're not going to try to be the next 'Dr. Death,' or have a Grizzlies podcast, because there's a bunch of Grizzlies podcasts."
