Medical School Bans Industry Contributions for Continuing-Medical-Education Courses

In an effort to eliminate a potential conflict of interest in medical education, the University of Michigan Medical School has announced that, starting next January, it will no longer take any money from drug or medical-device manufacturers to pay for the refresher courses that doctors must take to renew their licenses, The New York Times reported. Industry financing for continuing-medical-education courses amounts to some $1.2-billion a year nationwide, according to the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine. Concerns that biased or inaccurate information might be disseminated in courses underwritten by industry have been raised by medical educators and government officials in recent years. Some medical schools, including Stanford University’s, have limited outside influence over courses by pooling all industry contributions rather than allowing a company to specify the courses it wants to underwrite.