Newly reorganized Pfizer Medical Education Group will now rely on a request-for-proposal application model to allocate approximately 90 percent of its budget for medical education. The other 10 percent will be used to support traditional annual conferences.

This is just the latest in a series of pharmaceutical companies feeling the need to change their granting policies and procedures, from GlaxoSmithKline limiting the possible field of contenders to just 20, to Pfizer’s earlier decision to eliminate medical education companies from their grantee mix.

What do you think of the evolution of commercial support models? How have these changes affected the CME community? Please e-mail your thoughts to editor Sue Pelletier.

When Portland, Maine­–based event and media producer Diversified Business Communications acquired Pri-Med’s U.S. assets from M/C Holding Corp. this fall, it also brought back the medical education company’s founder and former CEO, John Mooney, who left Pri-Med in 2007.

Along with his management team, Mooney is also bringing back to Pri-Med the idea of expanding Pri-Med's CME focus beyond primary care. Here's more about the plan to incorporate specialty education into what has been a primary care stronghold.

George Mejicano, MD, president of what historically has been known as the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education, has announced that the organization now will be called the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions.

Here's more on the new name, and results of the vote to change the bylaws to allow the board of directors to appoint a nontraditional member.

Continuing medical education professionals from around the world gathered via the #CMEChat hashtag on Twitter on December 7 to talk about what can be done to improve how new information flows from annual conferences to local practices, using Medical Meetings’ November/December issue’s cover story as a jumping-off point. As one person pointed out, we need to find a way to curate the data presented at annual meetings more effectively.

Here's a wrap-up of ways they came up with to spread new medical information quickly to the widest possible audience while maintaining the integrity of the data.