Yep, there was a whole lot of tweeting going on (mostly by our staff and speakers, but still…)

Not only did my colleague Dave Kovaleski get to go to Hawaii, he got to tour the Sim Tiki Center at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoaʻs John A. Burns School of Medicine while he was covering the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum there recently. I remember getting to see a sim center demo at Duke as part of a CME Leadership conference a few years back, and being awestruck at what the thing could do. I wish more CME providers had access to these robo-patients, because their potential as a learning tool—even for journalists—is IMHO pretty huge.

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.

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!

I was so psyched today to get a letter about my editor’s note in our last issue. It was about doctors discussing end-of-life issues (you know, that “death panel” thing), and I really worried about wading into politics. But with healthcare reform in the spotlight, how could I not? Anyway, the letter writer made a great point that I hadn’t thought about.

If you haven’t checked it out, I’d like to invite you to read “Let’s Talk About the Hard Stuff” and let me know what you think here, or at the article site, or via e-mail. Am I totally out to lunch on this one?

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.

With my new position as editor of Association Meetings, I no longer will be able to maintain this lovely Capsules blog. Fortunately, there are others out there covering CME and pharma topics better than I. Some of my favorites are:

Anne’s T-V Blog, run by my friend and co-blogger Anne Tailor-Vaisey, is the resource for the latest in academia, research, and occasional fun stuff.

CME Linkages, run by Debra Gist, covers the latest news related to all things CME. It is, in a word, terrific.

Health Care Renewal keeps a close eye on the healthcare industry, rooting out evil-doing and the appearance thereof.

Pharma Gossip is all about, well, pharma gossip. It hits a lot of the same topics as Health Care Renewal, with a much snarkier tone.

We will leave Capsules up as an archive, so you can still search for older items. I will miss writing this site.

Thank you for everything!

Here we go again: Drug Files Show Maker Promoted Unapproved Use (from the New York Times).

The good news, for me, is that I just got a promotion—I will be the new editor of Association Meetings, a magazine I have always found to be fascinating, in a field that’s also fascinating. So many new things to explore!

While I’m really excited about the news, I’m also sad, because this means I will have to leave my job with Medical Meetings. I love the CME world, and the people who live in it, and I will miss it and you all horribly. I can’t begin to say how much. But a new world beckons, and I have to move on. I only hope that the association planners I will be serving will be as wonderful as you all have been to me. While my focus will be changing, I still plan to keep up to date on what’s happening in CME, and I still plan to go to the Alliance for CME meeting in January.

Thank you for everything, and I hope to see you there.

I just got a note from a hotel sales manager who wanted to unsubscribe from the weekly Capsules update because his responsibilities had shifted and he no longer served this market. I was so impressed that he read all the stuff here to better understand what his customers have to deal with. Now he is someone I would enjoy doing business with: a hotelier who really cares about his clients’ needs.