EFPIA Transparency Guidelines: Reporting Payments in Europe

In a recent update from the international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, through its soon-to-be new firm Norton Fulbright (now Norton Rose), the law firm discussed the disclosure of payments to healthcare practitioners in the United Kingdom (UK). The UK pharmaceutical industry has started publicly disclosing aggregate data on payments to healthcare practitioners (HCPs) and consulting on establishing a public register to disclose individual payments from 2016 onwards. As we previously noted, payments from the pharmaceutical industry working with HCPs have been estimated to be around £40 million for 2012 in the United Kingdom. "Collaborative working between HCPs and pharmaceutical companies has long been a positive driver for advancements in patient care and the progress of modern medicine. However, concerns have been raised around ethics and transparency. As a result, there has been a global shift towards greater transparency of financial relationships, with approaches ranging from legislation in the United States of America to self-regulation in the United Kingdom," the alert notes. Background On June 24th, 2010, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), which represents the research based pharmaceutical industry in Europe and comprises national associations and leading companies as members, made a public commitment to work towards greater transparency and ethical behavior within an industry framework of self regu...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs