Interactions between physicians and industry come under intense scrutiny in a variety of arenas including marketing, research, and continuing medical education. There has also been a slow creep of this debate into an increasing number of policy and political areas. An upcoming conference being organized by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation (May 13, Washington DC) highlights how the 'conflict of interest' crowd is attempting to put stakes in the ground further and further from their home base, despite having little new information to offer.
The conference, "Will Health Professionals Be Prepared to Meet The Demands of Health Reform?: Adapting continuing education for a new health care era," features the usual handful of organizations and individuals that are critical of physician-industry collaboration.
The focus will be on continuing medical education (CE), and "How CE should change in an era of health reform to better prepare health professionals and debate what policymakers, providers, and licensing, certification and accrediting bodies should do to foster effective and appropriate lifelong learning."
The topics are typical for the CE-industry funding debate and there appears to be few new concepts that will be presented at the conference. Nonetheless, it demonstrates how emerging, hot-topics such as health reform can be used to promote an issue in a new, more subtle, way. In this case, the conflict of interest movement is being promoted through healthcare reform. It also demonstrates that those in opposition to physician-industry interactions remain active in promoting and advancing their cause,which should reinforce the call to engage for those that see the value of collaboration.
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