Here’s the Questions:

• What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of your role?
• What is the one thing you’d like to see changed in the next year?
• What is your prediction for the future of CME?

And Here’s What the 2008 Speaker Faculty Had to Say:

Alfonso Negri, MD, GAME Board of Directors, Italian Federation of Medical Societies, Italy, Chairman, Scientific Seminars International Foundation, Italy
	1.	The realization of an international advisory group in CME/CPD
	2.	Awareness of national systems and exchanges
	3.	A global CME/CPD Village
Barbra McCaffrey, Health Education Specialist, Merck Frosst Canada
	1.	Working with primary care providers to uncover their attitude and behavior gaps that may be the root cause of a care gap that may be addressed by CME.
	2.	Convince more expert presenters of CME to modify their teaching methods and instructional design to incorporate interactive learning that facilitates knowledge translating into action.
	3.	As primary care is changing to become interdisciplinary and inter-professional, so too, will CME.
Bernard Maillet, MD, GAME Board of Directors, Secretary General UEMS, European Union of Medical Specialists, EACCME (European ACCME), Belgium
	1.	The most challenging role of my function is the mutual recognition of CME-CPD activities throughout Europe and worldwide.
	2.	The introduction in the UEMS-EACCME system of Long distance programs is one of the aims for 2008.
	3.	In future CME-CPD activities will have to be multimodal and health professionals will have to follow activities and events in different formats such as live events, local events, peer review sessions, long distance learning programs, CD Rom or article review...
Bob Meinzer, Senior Director National CME, New Jersey Academy of Family Physicians
	1.	Teaching fellow state AFP chapters the importance of outcome measurement
	2.	I'd like to see the CME community become stakeholders with the government in healthcare quality improvement
	3.	If we become partners with the governmnet on improving healthcare, we'll be OK, if we continue to be perceived as adversaries, the future looks grim
Brian A. Dahl, Director, Compliance, Teva Pharmaceuticals
	1.	Balancing the “Cop on the beat” side of my role with the “I’m here to help” side of my role. It’s easy for people to understand, and even appreciate, the hard side of compliance, namely, the side that investigates and audits and says no to activities that put the company at too much risk. But it’s also important that people understand the softer side of compliance, the side of compliance that is a resource that should be used to help the business accomplish its goals and objectives by offering insight and counsel on ways the company can achieve those goals and objectives in a way that doesn’t compromise the company’s integrity or cause it to run afoul of the law. Being approachable as a resource is challenging when too often people can’t get past your role as company cop.
	2.	I’d like to see more physicians be held accountable for their roles in activities that the government challenges as violating the Anti-kickback Statute and the False Claims Act.
	3.	I think some organization, maybe the ACCME or the AMA, or some group of organizations, a collection of state medical boards or a consortium of academic institutions, will look to take on a bigger role in evaluating the content of CME programs.
Diane Zuckerman, RPh, GAME Board of Directors, President, Foundation for Better Health Care
	1.	Responding to the ever-changing regulations, I am hiring more staff, including additional PhDs, which is a greater expense, and yet CME funding is decreasing so the imbalance is stressful on the organization.
	2.	Without question it is the perception of both pharma and CME. I am quite disturbed about the suspect that is opined by the public and the government. Yes, there has been disgrace by a few, but for the most part, integrity and mindfulness aretantamount to the CME community and to those who support and fund it. We all need to be more passionate and display our advocacy and veracity to change the negative perception.
	3.	Pharma dollars will continue to decrease and physicians will need to pay for their own CME, hopefully they will search out the best CME, not the least expensive.
Don Moore, PhD, Director CME/Professor of Medical Education, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
	1.	Convincing course directors to follow a different approach to CME that involves a focus on outcomes and more active learning.
	2.	More support to enable CME to experiment with new approaches to CME.
	3.	Practice-based CME characterized by blended learning.
Frederic S. Wilson, Director of CME, P&G Pharmaceuticals
	1.	Obtaining funding to continue supporting CME.
	2.	"Re-empowering" CME providers to meet their responsibility.
	3.	Near-term, physicians' lifelong learning and subsequent patient outcomes will be compromised
Gisela A. Paulsen, MPharm, Director, Independent Medical Education Department (IMED), Genentech
	1.	Continue to stay provider focused while creating and enhancing processes and procedures that are efficient and nimble that meet the needs of commercial supporters
	2.	An increased focus on innovation in IME, the true educational need of the medical profession and the ultimate goal of improving patient care; rather than creating policies and processes that hinder us to work toward this goal
	3.	I believe we will see the majority of activities being multisupported to allow for continued support of large, collaborative initiatives that deliver quality, compliant continuing education based on documented educational needs that will enhance the professional skills and knowledge of healthcare professionals and lead to improved patient outcomes.
Hong Jin Na, MS, Manager, Education Strategy and Continuous Improvement, Wyeth
	1.	To demonstrate the value of supporting independent to stakeholders
	2.	The certification of continuing medical education professionals
	3.	In the short run, there will be fewer accredited providers of continuing medical education
Kristin Rand, JD, Director, Professional Education Support, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals
	1.	I find the most challenging aspect of my role is keeping people and organizations committed to CME when there are many forces working against its existence.
	2.	I would like to see more advocacy regarding the positive effects of CME on patient care.
	3.	I predict CME will become even more important and its value will be recognized by all sectors.
Lawrence Sherman, FACME, President & CEO, The Physicians Academy
	1.	Many would answer that question by saying that finding funding is the most challenging part of what we do, yet others would say that reaching the most appropriate audience is tough. From my perspective, the biggest challenge is even broader than that: CME suffers from an identity crisis: on one hand it is clearly defined and many guidelines and rules exist, but it is at the same time struggling to have structure and form as the longest and certainly a critical part of physician training and education. This makes the role of providers, supporters, and learners difficult as we ponder: Are we acting as educators? Are we independent enough? Have we followed the guidelines as they exist at this time? Did we do our best? Until we can stop looking over our shoulders and fighting off naysayers and second-guessers, what we do will always be a challenge.
	2.	I would love to see CME continue to evolve into the profession that we all believe it to be. With the evolving ACCME criteria pointing providers even more in the direction of clear education, and the emergence of a certification process for CME professionals, it would be great to see the entire enterprise continue to evolve as acceptance increases.
	3.	Harmonization. Not soon, but harmonization. First in the US through mutual recognition of providers, then globally through credit recognition. Beyond that, I don’t have a clue!
Linda Raichle, PhD, FACME, President, Spectrum Medical Education
	1.	The most challenging aspect of my role is to continually try to encourage research and publication and sharing of best practices in CME in order to raise the bar for quality, evidencebased CME which demonstrates improved patient outcomes.
	2.	I'd like to see the public and press change their perception of CME from mis-trust to one of recognizing CME as a valuable contribution to the improvement of patient care.
	3.	I predict a bright future for CME, albeit one with more accountability and outcomes measurements. My ideal CME world consists of a data-driven and shared repository for performance gaps and a national curriculum of study in major disease areas. I envision a CME universe whereby educational needs, activities and outcomes are synchronized and focused on the learner with the resulting improvement in performance and patient outcomes.
Louis A. Reyes, DOME Director, Operations and Communications, Medical Education, Centocor, Inc.
	1.	Educating and then re-educating all participants in the daily interaction between industry and health professionals is a constant challenge. Not everyone is interested in the latest policy updates. Its up to our team to translate and transfer the knowledge we have as health education professionals to all parties. Educating individual health care professionals, industry personnel, and patient advocate groups is a constant need.
	2.	More recognition for the positive changes made in the past 3 years is needed. Several negative impressions from news stories and reports published in 2007 placed more emphasis on what occurred prior to 2004 as if it was still widespread practice. The reality is that medical education professionals and industry have made great strides since the 2003 OIG Program Guidance for Industry was introduced. The anecdotes from several years ago should be placed in proper context as the way things used to be done. More credit should be given to the way things are done now.
	3.	Its possible that education activities in the future may include a parallel system. We should be optimistic that CME in the future will evolve to provide more emphasis on overall disease management. The content will be more focused on all available beneficial approaches to patient care which, depending on the topic, may not need to rely so heavily on pharmaceutical options. However, professionals will still want and need to know as much as possible about specific treatment options. Its possible that a new class of education, developed by industry, will arise. It will be something that has its roots in what today are known as promotional programs, but it will differ in that the content will be a deeper understanding of specific products or classes of products. Industry will play a key role simply because it has access to greater amounts of data on its own products. This parallel system will differ from promotional programs because it will provide full disclosure in a fair and balanced manner without the objective of "closing a sale". Instead of relying solely on accredited programming, this new parallel system may present healthcare professionals with a secondary "certification" system that permits and encourages industry involvement.
Michael P. Bigelow, Assistant General Counsel, Eli Lilly & Co
	1.	The constant scrutiny of the pharmaceutical industry has led to an extremely difficult business environment. You not only have to operate in a way that ensures legal compliance, but you also have to always consider and try to predict what the public and media reaction will be to your practices.
	2.	I would like to find a way to improve the public image of the industry so that there is more focus on the benefits of the products we bring to market.
	3.	I think eventually physician education will look more like other types of professional education whereby the attendees pay for the cost of the programs and the system becomes less dependent on industry for funding.