• CME NOTES Looking for smallpox and bioterrorism courses?

  An excellent source is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Through their distance-learning arm, the Public Health Training Network, the two agencies presented a two-hour webcast entitled “Smallpox: What Every Clinician Should Know” in December. Information was presented on recognition and diagnosis of smallpox, management and reporting of a suspected case, and the characteristics and use of smallpox (vaccinia) vaccine. Free Category 1 credit was available to physicians, as were CEUs for nurses and other health care professionals. The program was also available via satellite downlink.

  To learn more about this ongoing program, visit www.phppo.cdc.gov.

  On a related note, the Florida State University College of Medicine has established a Center on Terrorism and Public Health that will serve as a resource for educating health professionals and the public on how to deal with weapons of mass destruction and bioterrorism.

  Largest Hospitalists Meeting

  An unusual cooperative venture between a national medical association and a medical center took place in November when Emory University's School of Medicine teamed up with the National Association of Inpatient Physicians (NAIP) to present “Improving Care of the Hospitalized Patient.”

  During the two-day conference physicians from the southeastern United States explored recent findings in clinical research, practice innovations, clinical guidelines, case reports, and quality improvement programs in the field of hospital medicine.

  Pre- and post-conference sessions were also held on the subjects of critical care and pain management, respectively. According to the NAIP, this was the largest gathering of inpatient physicians, known as hospitalists, ever held in the Southeast.

  e-Literacy for Physicians

  Blue Cross of California and the San Diego-based California Health Alliance, a not-for-profit affiliate of the San Diego County Medical Society, have announced a new initiative dedicated to assisting San Diego County physicians in becoming technology-literate. They plan to offer courses on computer technology in medicine, best practice guidelines, patient education, HIPAA compliance and patient confidentiality, patient satisfaction and service, and maximizing quality of patient care.

• NOTABLE MEETING Geeks Meet Docs

  At the Tenth Annual Medicine Meets Virtual Reality Conference, held January 23 to 26 at the Newport Beach (Calif.) Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club, physicians evaluated the newest high-tech tools for therapy, including information-guided surgery, data visualization, robotics, and distance medicine.

  The conference was expected to draw a mix of computer scientists, physicians, medical educators, and biomedical researchers and investors. “Digital Upgrades: Applying Moore's Law to Health” is this year's theme, an acknowledgement that VR technology has entered clinical care. The conference is jointly sponsored by the University of California Irvine College of Medicine and Aligned Management Associates Inc. To learn more about the conference, visit the Web site at www.nextmed.com.

  Talk About Cloning

  The hottest speaker with the hottest topic in medicine right now is quite possibly Michael D. West, PhD, president and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, and co-author of a paper on human therapeutic cloning published November 26 in e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine.

  West gave a presentation at the Second Annual Conference on Regenerative Medicine, held at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C., in December 2001. The three-day meeting also included presentations on the newest research in stem cells, tissue engineering, bioethics, cloning, nanobiotechnology, bioinformatics, cell and stem cell biology, embryology, gene therapy, genomics, organogenesis, transplantation biology and transplantation medicine.

For more information about the conference, you can call BioConferences International at (914) 834-3100, or visit the conference Web site at www.bioconferences.com/ebio/.

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