ABPI pledges greater payment transparency

A change to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry's (ABPI) Code of Practice is intended to provide greater transparency for payments to healthcare professionals and organisations.

A recent industry consultation found respondents overwhelmingly in favour of public disclosure of payments within the healthcare professional community and across commercial life sciences companies.

Almost 90 per cent of 1,055 respondents agreed that payments to individually named healthcare professionals by companies should be transparent and publicly declared.

The ABPI is considering a number of potential methods of disclosure, with 80 per cent of survey respondents in favour of a single, publically searchable, central database.

A consultation about the proposed change is expected to take place in summer 2014, and the ABPI says that the 2015 code is likely to include requirements about the method of disclosure.

“For too long the industry has suffered from a common misunderstanding around the nature of its relationship with healthcare professionals,” said ABPI chief executive Stephen Whitehead.

“The changes to the code are part of the industry's attempt to address this misunderstanding and to enhance transparency around these relationships. We hope this will allow us to foster greater trust between the medical community, industry and patients.”

Changes to the code are being made to implement the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations code on the disclosure of transfers of value from pharmaceutical companies to health care organisations and professionals, the ABPI said.

The changes refer to information which should be collected in 2015 for disclosure in 2016.