Jul 1, 2016 - Currently, payments to healthcare professionals by pharmaceutical companies are made publically available
Disclosure of payments to individual healthcare professionals 2015 – video transcript Aileen Thompson, ABPI Executive Director – Communications Hello, I'm Aileen Thompson, one of the directors of the ABPI. We are proud of the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals. It's a relationship that has helped develop and deliver many life-saving medicines, changed the care pathway of many diseases and the way we deliver health care. From HIV to hepatitis C, heart disease to cancer, by working together, healthcare professionals and industry have transformed the lives of patients, carers and families. One eighth of the world's most popular branded medicines, were developed in the UK with the collaboration and input of healthcare professionals and healthcare organisations. Continuing to work with healthcare professionals is critical to the future of medical innovation and patient care. Whether it's helping to ensure that prescribers stay informed of the latest developments in treatment or building our understanding of how a medicine fits in to the treatment pathway, patients and patient care benefits. Looking forward, we want to ensure that patients can continue to have confidence in the relationship between their healthcare professional and the industry that develops the medicines they need. So, we are taking the significant step of publicly disclosing payments made to healthcare professionals on a searchable database, available online. So when will these changes happen? Currently, payments to healthcare professionals by pharmaceutical companies are made publically available on an aggregate basis. Since 2012, companies have disclosed the number of healthcare professionals they work with, the total amount paid for fees for service and sponsorship to attend educational meetings. From the 1st of January 2015, the industry in 33 countries across Europe began collecting data for certain payments made to individual healthcare professionals. Details of these payments will be published by the 1st July 2016. How will these payments be made public? In the UK we are developing a single, searchable, publicly available database to display the payment information. Accessed through the ABPI website, users will be able to search the data using a simple web based search tool or download the whole dataset. This means that any patient should be able to see relevant payments made by a company to their doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional treating them. The database will also show what type of work the payment was for.
Companies are already discussing the changes with the healthcare professionals with whom they work. There are resources to support companies and the healthcare professional community on our website – www.abpi.org.uk. Before any of the information goes live, healthcare professionals and healthcare organisations will be given the opportunity to check the data relating to them and raise any queries with the relevant company. Innovation and collaboration are key to addressing some of the unprecedented challenges our healthcare system faces. We want to continue to work together with a wide range of healthcare professionals and health care organisation. Patients need us to work together in an open and transparent way - to share information and expertise, to learn from each other and our colleagues and to continue to develop medicines that transform lives. For further information and more detail on this initiative please visit our website – www.abpi.org.uk. Thank you.
