The early bird 25 percent-off rates for the Second European CME Forum are ending on Aug. 31, so if you’re interested in what’s going on internationally with continuing medical education, check out the program here. It’s going to be held in London on November 18-19, and features speakers including some familiar names: Lawrence Sherman, Sue Guthrie and Thomas Kellner.

If you can’t make the meeting but are interested in international CME, join the European CME Forum Linked In group. Some great discussions can be found there.

OK, this is just too weird not to mention, though I doubt you’ll be developing CME activities around it any time soon: Blue Rats Walk Again. Yep, sounds like something called the Brilliant Blue G dye, when injected into rats very soon after a devastating spinal cord injury, gets them back on their feet. And turns them blue.

Kind of cute, isn’t he? Here’s a link to the actual research abstract: Systemic administration of an antagonist of the ATP-sensitive receptor P2X7 improves recovery after spinal cord injury.

Just caught a link to this NYT article on CME Linkages and thought, boy do these docs need CME: Disparities: Study Finds Risk in Off-Label Prescribing. Basically, the study said that the docs surveyed only knew the correct status of about half the drugs they were asked about. Here’s the scariest snippet:

Confusion was greatest with psychiatric drugs, the survey of some 600 doctors found. Nearly one in five who prescribed Seroquel (quetiapine) in the previous year thought it was approved for patients with dementia and agitation, even though it was never approved for this use and even carried a “black box” warning that it was dangerous for elderly patients with dementia. And one in three doctors who used lorazepam (often marketed as Ativan) to treat chronic anxiety thought it had been approved for this use; in fact, the F.D.A. warning advises against using it for this purpose.

So I have to ask, where are they getting their information? It sure isn’t from accredited CME.

American Medical Association President J. James Rohack, MD, has launched a blog called On the Road with Dr. Rohack. According to a press release, the idea is to “chronicle his thoughts on health care in America, discuss the leading issues affecting patients and physicians and share with readers his front-row view of the evolving health-reform debate.”

The AMA is really getting into this social media thing: This spring it also launched a profile page on Twitter, @AmerMedicalAssn.

Google just launched PLoS Currents: Influenza. The site is designed to allow researchers to share the latest research on influenza. From the Google blog:

PLoS Currents: Influenza, which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes, where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable.

To enable contributions to PLoS Currents: Influenza to be shared as rapidly as possible, they will not be subject to in-depth peer review; however, unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators led by Eddie Holmes (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University) and Peter Palese (Department of Microbiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine).

While the contributions won’t be peer-reviewed, the hope is that the researchers will submit their work to peer-reviewed journals as well, and also publish their findings on the site.

Someone e-mailed me recently with a really good question: What medical conference models are doing well financially in today’s regulatory and economic climate?

While the scale and plushness of the properties used for conferences nowadays have been dialed back, so has the commercial support available, especially for smaller, regional meetings. Or so I hear. And, of course, while I’m all for the ACCME’s new requirements in terms of measuring results, all those pre- and post-tests come at a cost. So it’s costing more to put on an activity than in the past, and there is less funding available. But there are still a lot of activities going on, according to the most recent ACCME Data Report. Last time I checked, this was still a business. So someone has to be making money off of it, right?

What types of medical conferences are doing more than struggling to break even these days? Is it possible to still make a profit when it comes to CME events, specifically? Or is it wrong to even talk about CME in terms of monetary profits these days (i.e., does it scare commercial supporters to think their dollars could possibly contribute to profit for the provider)? If you have any thoughts about what’s working, financially speaking, I’d love to hear them either in the comments below or via e-mail.

I know I’m really late in posting this link, but I just wrote an article about it last week and didn’t get around to watching it until then. So, with no further ado, check out this videocast of the Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing from late July, called Medical Research and Education: Higher Learning or Higher Earning?, starring ACCME’s own Murray Kopelow, MD, among other illustrious folks. I don’t know how he kept his cool after hearing ACCME get bashed repeatedly during the first panel’s testimony, particularly that of Steven Nissen, MD, Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. I mean, really, he actually said, to Dr. Kopelow’s face, that “Maybe [ACCME doesn’t] have resources, maybe they do not have the will. We need ACCME to go away.”

The problem the pro-commercial support people had (and I call them that for a lack of a better term) is that they threw either a lot of anecdotes or a lot of data, but not the kind of sound bites legislators can hear, digest, and understand. I’m not saying our elected officials are incapable of understanding all the nuances of accredited CME and its financial support system, just that they don’t have the time or the inclination to parse every tiny bit of it the way you and I do. I hope they do go through the reams of info Dr. Kopelow put in his written testimony (also available for download here, with everyone else’s as well), but I doubt it. The whole hearing seemed stacked against commercial support from the get-go to me.

This sounds familiar, and not in a good way. From the Boston Globe: Court reinstates J&J kickback case. Among the charges alleged by two former salespeople are that Johnson & Johnson’s Ortho Biotech Products unit gave kickbacks to docs who prescribed its Procrit anemia drug, most of which were covered by Medicare.

From the Globe: “Jan Schlichtmann, attorney for the former salesmen, said Ortho Biotech ran “an extensive scheme’’ in which doctors were given free Procrit, honoraria, speaking fees, “off-the-invoice discounts,’’ and other monetary inducements to give their patients Procrit, particularly after the drug faced competition from rival Amgen Inc.’s Aranesp…

Johnson & Johnson spokesman Bill Foster said one of the two main claims in the suit was dismissed by the appeals court. “We are pleased with the Court of Appeals decision (on that claim) and will vigorously defend against the remaining allegations,’’ Foster said. “We intend to seek dismissal of this last remaining claim.’’ [emphasis mine]

While this may be back in the news today, let’s all keep in mind that this happened, if it happened, in the 1990s, not yesterday.

It seems like just yesterday (definitely not two and a half years ago!) when I bid this blog a fond adieu as I moved on to a new job. But now I’ve boomeranged back to Medical Meetings, and I’m bringing my blog with me.

So if you’ve been hanging around this neighborhood for a while, say hi to your old friend, Capsules. I’ll try to stay on top of all the latest news in the world of pharma marketing regulations, CME, and whatever else seems relevant, interesting, or just worth sharing with you all. I thought about starting fresh and deleting all the old posts, but you know, they just might come in handy sometime, so I’m leaving them up. Just remember that everything older than this post is a couple of years older!

Please feel free to drop a comment in the comment box (you can do it anonymously if you’d prefer), or e-mail me with your thoughts on what’s happening in the world, what you’d like to see happen in the magazine or online, and generally how I can help you find what you need and want to have to do your job even better.