Medical communication companies and continuing medical education clouding the sunshine?

摘要

Where do all these CME invitations come from? Many come from medical communication companies, largely for-profit entities that create, organize, promote, and run CME activities.Instead of CME, however, some medical communication companies focus on promotional services, such as recruiting and training for the pharmaceutical company's speakers bureaus and preparing their slide decks; assisting with publication planning for medical journal articles, or even writing them. Some companies engage in both promotion and education. But that can be problematic. Education should be evidence based and unbiased: getting clinicians the facts. Promotion is, well, promotional: persuading clinicians to use a particular product. Companies that do both promotion and education are required to maintain a strict "firewall" between these activities-no contact between teams working in the same clinical arena. The obvious concern is conflict of interest. Without a strict firewall between promotion and education, promotional interests may bias educational efforts.