CMO = Chief Medical Officer or Chief Marketing Officer

When you see someone who has the title CMO, what do those three letters mean to you? To physicians, we interpret CMO to mean Chief Medical Officer. To the rest of the world, CMO means Chief Marketing Officer.

We all know CEO, COO, and CFO. The C-suite can be an interesting place when you have a CMO as well. Hospitals may also have a CMIO or Chief Medical Information Officer.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the C-suite:

The highest level executives are usually called "C-level" or part of the "C-suite", referring to the 3-letter initials starting with "C" and ending with "O" (for "Chief __________ Officer"); the major traditional such offices are Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operations Officer (COO), and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In technology companies, a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is also central, and for companies with a strong IT capacity a Chief Information Officer (CIO) is also significant. (Most other C-level titles are not universally recognized, and tend to be specific to particular organizational cultures or preferences.)

Top 10 Contract Research Organizations

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Contract Research Organizations (CROs):

A Contract Research Organization, also called a Clinical Research Organization, (CRO) is a service organization that provides support and/or services for clinical trials. CROs support the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries as well as foundations, research institutions, and universities, in addition to governmental organizations (such as the NIH, EMEA, etc.). There are over 1,100 CROs in the world. It is a very fragmented industry with the top 10 controlling 56.1% of the market in 2008. One estimate had the size of the market set to reach $24 billion in 2010 and set to grow at a rate of 8.5% through 2015.

Top 10 CROs:

1. Quintiles ($2.5 billion)[2][6]
2. Covance ($1.8 billion)[2][6]
3. Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) ($1.4 billion in sales)[2][7]
4. Charles River Laboratories (CRL) ($1.2 Billion sales)[6]
5. Parexel ($930 million in sales)[6]
6. ICON ($887 million)[8]
7. Kendle ($590 million in sales) [6]
8. Pharmanet ($470 million in sales)[6]
9. PRA International ($410 million in sales)[6]
10. Aptuit ($370 million in 2009)[6]

Would you benefit from computer training?

Do you consider yourself to be a technology expert? How strong are your computer skills? Do you feel lost if you're sitting with a group of computer engineers, developers, programmers who start talking about work-related issues? Maybe that's when you fire up your smartphone and jump to CNN Business so that you can see what's going on in the technology sector.  

Even if you don't plan to pursue a career in the health information technology (or informatics) industry, it can still be very beneficial to receive computer training. What should you learn about? How about virtualization technology? What do you know about virtualization technology? I'm not referring to "virtual reality" here. I'm specifically talking about solutions made by companies like VMware. Maybe you're considering some formal Vmware Training.

Virtualization technology is growing rapidly. So is the demand for VMware professionals. What do you know about virtualization? Can you utilize VMware to make your servers more secure and easier to maintain? What exactly is VMware? According to Wikipedia: VMware is a provider of virtualization software. The Company is majority owned by EMC Corporation. VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. VMware's enterprise software, VMware ESX Server, runs directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.

What's virtualization software? According to Wikipedia: The term "virtualization" was coined in the 1960s, to refer to a virtual machine (sometimes called pseudo machine), a term which itself dates from the experimental IBM M44/44X system. The creation and management of virtual machines has been called platform virtualization, or server virtualization, more recently.

Now, do you feel totally lost, or are you following this discussion so far? Perhaps it's time to enroll in some formal Vmware training courses if you're qualified. Are you qualified? If you're an upper level enterprise network administrator, an IT pro or system admin with a strong desire to learn VMware ESX Server & VMware Infrastructure for use at a professional level organization, then you're probably qualified. If you have basic knowledge of server/network operating system like Windows Server or Linux, or have basic networking skills, then you're probably qualified. 

Medpedia: Another Medical Wiki?

Is the Medpedia project yet another medical wiki? Or will this be something different? There are already several medical wikis out there.

Medpedia is being developed in association with four major medical universities: Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan.

Will this be Web 2.0 at its best? Will medical wikis serve as the primary source of medical information for healthcare professionals and consumers? Since anyone can contribue to wikis, how will the immense volume of information be monitored and controlled?