This just in from the ACCME (press release):

Chicago, June 28, 2010— The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education has provided additional guidance related to the role of ACCME-defined commercial interest employees in accredited CME. The guidance outlines the ACCME standards for ensuring independence for CME about discovery and research.

We are providing the updated guidance as a result of discussions we have had over the last several months with accredited providers concerning the role of commercial interest employees in accredited CME about research and discovery. The ACCME’s objective is to support the free flow of scientific exchange while safeguarding accredited CME from commercial influence.

The 2004 ACCME Standards for Commercial Support: Standards to Ensure Independence in CME Activities call for accredited providers to produce accredited CME that is independent and free of the control of ACCME-defined commercial interests.

In 2009, in response to questions from providers, the ACCME provided guidance about the role of employees of ACCME-defined commercial interests in accredited CME. The ACCME said that under some circumstances, employees of ACCME-defined commercial interests can plan, speak and present in accredited CME – and in some circumstances they cannot. This ACCME policy relates to Standard 1: Independence.

In order to serve the best interests of the public, the ACCME is careful to avoid making policy that would interfere with the translation of discovery into appropriate use.

We recognize that it is important for accredited CME to include reporting about the discovery phase of product development. We also realize that employees of ACCME-defined commercial interests are often involved in research and discovery. We appreciate that accredited providers face complex challenges when determining how to integrate discovery and research into accredited CME while safeguarding independence and complying with ACCME requirements. Over the last two years, the ACCME has worked closely with accredited providers as they have adapted their CME programs to comply with ACCME policy regarding the role of employees of ACCME-defined commercial interests in accredited CME. The ACCME and accredited providers have worked together to develop strategies that facilitate the appropriate flow of new information, while at the same time preserving accredited CME’s independence.

Together, the ACCME and accredited providers have recognized that there are circumstances where an employee of an ACCME-defined commercial interest can make a scientific presentation within accredited CME about their company’s research — and be compliant with the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support. The guidance includes examples of important factors for providers and the ACCME to consider in determining an appropriate role for an employee of an ACCME-defined commercial interest in planning or presenting accredited CME.

The ACCME will continue to answer providers’ questions and support them through the process of developing and implementing strategies to meet ACCME standards for independence.

I know you all have some good ideas on how we can improve health. Now you have the potential to share them through the Bodyshock project. According to the Web site, “BodyShock is a call for ideas to improve global health over the next 3-10 years by transforming our bodies and lifestyles.”

A few of those who have winning ideas “will be flown to IFTF in Palo Alto, California on October 8, to present their ideas and be connected to mentors and resources. One of these ideas will also win the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize.”

It sounds interesting, anyway. If you enter, I wish you luck.

I’d like to say that CME is in the news because of an amazing activity that is improving patients’ health, but alas, it’s not to be. No, instead it’s the latest wrinkle in the “is commercial support and/or industry-provider collaboration evil” debate that was featured in the New York Times: Debate Over Industry Role in Educating Doctors

It seems like just yesterday I was asking about CME designed to improve what, for lack of a better term, I’d call customer service and how it can affect patient outcomes. Then today I run across this week’s Grand Rounds, which is focused on customer service in healthcare. While the posts I clicked into weren’t directly focused on CME per se, check out this one from Mastering Data Management.

Among the many benefits of the Louisiana Rural Health Information Exchange the post covers is that it enables rural HCPs to participate remotely in CME. Nice!

If you can, I hope you get outcomes like this doc did when she got creative in getting patients to get their mammograms: A Smashing Good Time.

If you do offer activities designed to help physicians look into different ways to get their patients to comply with best healthcare practices, please let me know (here’s my e-mail). I’d love to hear how you did it — and what the outcomes were!

Check this out: The Clinical Skills Online, a project that, according to its YouTube caption, is “aimed at providing online videos demonstrating core clinical skills common to a wide range of medical and health-based courses. This project has been funded by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine.” It also says they are freely available to “anyone using them for educational, personal and non-commercial purposes only. (Please read both the site disclaimer and the creative commons license for more information).” Interesting!

As much as poor Gardiner Harris (medical reporter for the New York Times) gets bashed at almost every CME conference I’ve been to, you have to admit that he tries pretty hard to get things right. But so many mainstream media reporters just don’t understand the medical/scientific (much less CME) news they write about. Check out this post by Joe Rominiecki on the Acronym blog, where he points to both this excellent article — Bad medical writing hurts public health — and proposes that associations take a more active role in ensuring reporters get it right when they report findings from major medical conferences.

I think he might be onto something…

Today I got a press release about something called Disaster Hero. From the release: “Video game developer and publisher Legacy Interactive® today announced a contract with the American College of Emergency Physicians to develop a game designed to teach children and their families how to prepare for all types of hazards or emergencies. This project is funded by a grant (2008-GT-T8-K028) from the Department of Homeland Security.” (Aside: Interesting form of nontraditional commercial support!) I could easily see another version of this game being developed for healthcare providers and emergency care workers as well.

It reminded me of a session on games at GAME (which sounds funny now that I think about it!) Tyson Greer, CEO of Ambient Insight, gave a very cool session on mobile applications for healthcare learning. I wish I could link to her presentation, but I don’t think it’s posted yet. She talked about how healthcare is leading the mobile learning evolution because of what she called a “perfect storm”: a large and growing buyer demographic, powerful Internet-connected convergent devices, new mobile learning development tools and delivery platforms–4,800 apps have already been developed for health, fitness, and medical use–and an explosion of new learning content apps and mass-market content distribution channels. Oh yeah, and the growth in wireless broadband.

And some of those apps are pretty cool. She mentioned things like Active Ingredient, where you create a world based on what the heart monitor you’re wearing says (if it’s good, you walk down a pretty path; not so good, not so pretty). Another very cool sounding game that’s more physician-focused was Healing Blade (”Are you an Apothecary Healer or a Lord of Pestilence? This is the question posed by Healing Blade, a table-top card battle game designed by two physicians that combines sorcery and creatures with a real-world knowledge of infectious diseases and therapeutics.”) She also mentioned apps developed by MedPage Today that teaches docs how to discuss with patients all the health-related news they’re hearing about on TV and in the papers (and on Twitter, etc., etc.). And she said there are mobile learning products aimed at healthcare licensing exam prep.

As Greer said, “Learning can be fun. Learning in an engaging environment works.” I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it.

Of the top 50 continuing education blogs, that is. Well, the link actually goes to the Medical Meetings site, but that’s fine with me. Thanks for the link love, StudentLoans.net.

Just a week and a half ago I was in beautiful Montreal, Canada, for the 15th Annual Global Alliance for Medical Education meeting. Now I’ve been to a bunch of Alliance for CME conferences, and the Annual Conference of the National Task Force on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration, and the “CME Olympics,” not to mention a workshop or two and even a CME boot camp. So I’m a little jaded when it comes to this type of event.

It just blew me away. The opening keynote by Thomas Stossel, MD, from Harvard Medical School (who would have guessed that someone so passionate and intense could be so funny?), was intriguing, thought-provoking, and squirm-inducing, all at the same time. I didn’t agree with everything he had to say, but I love that someone cares this deeply about the role of industry-provider collaboration in healthcare innovation.

The glimpses into the worlds of both healthcare and CME in countries as diverse as the U.S., Canada, Malaysia, Argentina, Mexico, Japan, India, and the European union were both eye-opening, and a little scary (really, only 0.6 physicians per 1,000 people in India, a country with a population of more than a billion? And, according to Saurabh Jain, MD, director CME solutions, Indegene Lifesystems, Bangalore, it has “no real CME system.”)

The performance improvement programs sessions were among the best I’ve attended, and I’ve been to some really good ones. Finally, a session about data and performance improvement that I actually understood! Thank you to Michael Barbouche, MD, with Odeondata, for making me laugh while turning on that data lightbulb.

But they saved some of the best sessions for last—Suzanne Murray of Axdev broke us up into small groups to talk about international collaboration initiatives we have been a part of, including the challenges, barriers, and things that worked well. The energy level in the room skyrocketed, and while I knew that regular communication–face-to-face, if possible–is vital to international collaboration, I learned that it’s also important to define your terms, even if you all speak the same language. (Did you know that satellite symposia are very different things in the U.S. than they are in Europe?)

At the end of the last day, three experts gave us a glimpse into the future of CME, from mobile learning—there are some awesome apps out there already, and more coming online daily—to simulations, and of course social media, which was used throughout the meeting, mainly through Twitter. Yes, I was a tweeting fool, at least until my netbook battery died, ironically, just before the social media session. Check out the #game2010 twitter stream for yourself to see what the buzz was about.

Look for articles on all of the above in future issues of Medical Meetings, and if you are at all interested in collaborating internationally on CME, give some serious thought to attending next year’s meeting in Munich, Germany. Really, it was that good.