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Product Updates

December 24, 2019

COMAT Product Updates

The COMAT exam series will expand in January 2020 to include the new Foundational Biomedical Sciences (FBS) Targeted exams. Each of the 14 exams focus on a specific organ body system or basic science discipline introduced to osteopathic medical students in years one and two. Click here to see the full list of available FBS Targeted subject exams.

Since the introduction of the FBS Comprehensive exam in December 2018, a total of 20 Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine have used or plan to use the FBS exams for pre-clerkship assessments to complement their use of the COMAT Clinical discipline exams for their end-of-rotation needs in years three and four.

The October issue of the Journal of Graduate Medical Education included research on the concurrent and predictive validity of the COMAT discipline exams and COMLEX-USA Level 2-CE. The findings indicated statistically significant, positive associations between COMAT and COMLEX-USA Level 2-CE scores, which can support the use of COMAT for osteopathic medical schools.

 

COMSAE Product Updates

After the first several score releases for COMLEX-USA Level 1 beginning mid-July 2019 and Level 2-CE beginning mid-August 2019, the NBOME conducted a comprehensive evaluation of scores on COMSAE Phase 1 and Phase 2 and subsequent scores on COMLEX-USA Level 1 and Level 2-CE. Following this evaluation, both the COMSAE Phase 1 and Phase 2 new score reports and scoring will be implemented on February 3, 2020. Please note that the COMSAE Phase 2 cut-score remains the same as 2019.

In addition, the NBOME has conducted a concordance correlation study, which demonstrated a positive and significant correlation, around 0.70, with COMSAE Phase 1 and COMLEX-USA Level 1 and COMSAE Phase 2 and COMLEX-USA Level 2-CE. This concordance study finding is consistent with those of recent years for all forms purchased by COMs with timed administrations.

As always, caution should be exercised when using COMSAE scores to estimate subsequent COMLEX-USA scores or for uses other than those for which they were developed.

We will continue to communicate regularly with COMs regarding new information related to COMSAE scores and their relationship to COMLEX-USA scores, as well as other COMSAE program updates as they become available.

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