Disclosure of Pharmaceutical Industry Payments to Health Professionals in Europe

What is it about?

Relationships between health professionals and pharmaceutical manufacturers can unduly influence clinical practice. These relationships are the focus of global transparency efforts, including in Europe. We conducted a descriptive content analysis of the transparency provisions implemented by February 2017 in nine European Union (EU) countries concerning payments to health professionals. Our analysis shows that although important improvements have been put in place in the past few years, significant gaps remain in disclosure requirements and their implementation. The situation differs substantially from country to country and the most striking differences are between governmental and self-regulatory approaches, especially with regard to the comprehensiveness of the disclosed data. In many cases, physicians can still opt out and reporting is incomplete, with common influential gifts such as food and drink excluded. Finally, in several countries data are only available as separate PDFs from companies, thus making the payment reports difficult to access and analyse.

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Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our analysis has several implications for future policy initiatives to increase transparency in relationships between health professionals and pharmaceutical industry. Minimum standards for transparency reporting are needed across Europe. This would be best achieved through EU legislation that is implemented by each Member State, ensuring harmonisation among countries without existing policies. For the countries that already have legislation in place, harmonisation should only be required if current legislation is to a lower standard than what is envisioned.

Perspectives