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BLOG: The AAO 2015 marketplace
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The AAO convention in Vegas is just around the corner. Are you ready?
All kinds of stuff are for sale at our biggest trade show. A couple thousand people will be there hoping that you will either buy something (Femtosecond laser! LipiFlow!) or help them sell something (Restasis! Prolensa!). Newish companies with truly new ideas (Imprimis, Omeros, AcuFocus) will compete for your attention with behemoths only getting bigger (Allergan, Alcon, Valeant). It’s our annual version of a Cairo street bazaar.
Our world has changed dramatically since I started this eye doctor gig some 30 years ago. The commerce of eye care was once hush hush, carried out on the down low behind closed doors. Now? The amount of transparency, both real and imagined, has forever changed how we view our conventions and how we, the doctors, are viewed when we attend — even more so for those of us who are paid by these companies as speakers or consultants. Case in point: The consulting income reported by the nominee for commissioner of the FDA was portrayed as some kind of bad thing.
I never really thought about this much before, and I’ll bet you didn’t, either. In a way, we’ve all been “sold and bought” as well, with access to our time and our pocketbooks being purchased by companies in return for funding our one-stop CME shopping spree. Because this is a conscious, bottom-line decision made by for-profit businesses, it’s worth spending a moment thinking about the trade. We can all say with a straight face that gifts of pens and penlights never influenced our prescribing habits or major purposes. Can we, or should we, say the same about CME?
Here’s my take, as both a CME consumer and paid consultant to companies large and small: Not only is industry funding of CME OK, but we should unshackle the makers of products we use to treat our patients and let them do even more in the way of educating us. I learn so much more that I can take home and use to treat my patients at these meetings than almost anywhere else. I just can’t remember the last time I went to a purely academic CME meeting and captured a practice pearl that I used right away. It happens all the time at the AAO annual meeting (and ASCRS).
That’s time, and money, well spent.
Disclosure: White reports he is a consultant for Bausch + Lomb, Allergan, Shire and Eyemaginations and on the speakers board for Bausch + Lomb, Allergan and Shire.