Payments register moves closer
pharmafile | January 29, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Bad pharma, Goldacre, NHS, doctors, pharma
Greater transparency around the payments made by pharma companies to doctors looks to have moved a step closer with a new consultation on establishing a public register.
Launched yesterday by the Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group (ESHLSG), the consultation asks questions such as whether there should be a single searchable database of payments, for example.
“It is about the principle of developing a mechanism,” explained ABPI director Andy Powrie-Smith. “It doesn’t go into detail about what type of payments and in what format and so on.”
Other questions to stakeholders include what impact a register would have on pharma’s collaborations with doctors and the role of health professionals in disclosure.
Transparency on a number of issues has been a recurring theme in any debate around trust in pharma in recent times, with Ben Goldacre’s Bad Pharma crystallizing disquiet last year.
Powrie-Smith insists that the timing of the ESHLSG consultation has not been given the ‘hurry-up’ by poor publicity arising from Goldacre’s critical book. “Absolutely not,” he said.
But he conceded that the issues raised in Bad Pharma and the level of focus it attracted have in many ways been useful. “Rather than being inspired by it, it confirms that we’re heading in the right direction,” Powrie-Smith said.
Pharma companies in the UK will begin publishing a total figure they made to healthcare professionals – and the number of people receiving money – later this year.
Goldacre has ridiculed this move on the grounds that it would not be possible to tell how much individuals were actually paid.
European pharma body EFPIA is aiming towards public disclosure of payments across Europe by 2016, although it has also warned against the ‘indiscriminate’ release of data.
The wind is certainly blowing in favour of greater transparency in pharma, with the European Medicines Agency starting work on the mechanism by which clinical trial data would be published.
And Roche has said it will let researchers have more data on flu vaccine Tamiflu, apparently under pressure from campaigners who have criticised the Swiss pharma company.
The Basel-based firm has been the subject of calls from the British Medical Journal and the Cochrane Collaboration to open up access to complete trial findings.
Adam Hill
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