In the latest bid to rid continuing medical education of industry influence, a Harvard Medical School neurologist has teamed with a pair of businesspeople to form their own firm to provide CME to doctors across the country. The plan is to make money by selling their curriculum to hospitals, medical societies, insurers and others that offer CME.

“Doctors have lost confidence in [continuing medical education] and the public has lost confidence,’’ Martin Samuels, who has just launched Lighthouse Learning, tells The Boston Globe. “The feeling is that everything is tainted. We simply must have a new way of doing this.” Samuels, by the way, once ran a neurology course for Pri-Med, an industry-funded CME company.

The controversy over CME has prompted a drop in industry funding. Commercial support last year was $856 million, or 39 percent of total funding, down from $1.2 billion, or 48 percent, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education. The ACCME director Murray Kopelow tells the paper that Lighthouse is not unique, although Samuels contends most other providers are small and do not operate nationally, and some do accept advertising or support for exhibits at conferences.

As part of the plan, Lighthouse has recruited 11 specialists - including the outspoken and controversial Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steve Nissen - to serve as curriculum directors for such specialties as nephrology, endocrinology, obstetrics, oncology and psychiatry, among others. To deflect industry influence, these folks will not teach other courses funded by drugmakers and its advisory board will review the relationships between the directors and industry. Consulting fees and other ties will not be prohibited, but limited and disclosed, Samuels tells the paper.

Whether this approach will succeed remains to be seen, Samuels believes CME is headed in this direction and doctors will appreciate venues where bias may not encroach. On the other hand, finding experts who do not have ties is likely to be something of a hurdle, given that those most in demand are also the ones who have relationships with drugmakers. This is an issue that the FDA has mentioned more than once in explaining its decision-making process for choosing experts to serve on its advisory committees.