 | With $1 billion invested every year, the pharmaceutical industry makes a vital contribution to independent continuing education programs for physicians in the US. But with such large sums at stake, there has been growing public concern that these funds should be spent responsibly |
‘Medical education funded by drug companies has to be real education, not a soft sell designed to sway treatment decisions.’ This is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, announcing the results of their recent inquiry into the activities of pharmaceutical companies in this area. |  |
In fact government and media interest in the whole issue of medical education has been growing steadily in the US over the past few years, and pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to ensure that the independent medical education they support is exactly that – independent – and that no undue influence is exerted on the healthcare providers who benefit from it.
So how are we responding? What is Shire doing to ensure that our support goes to the right programs, and in the right way? It’s Tiffany Cummings, our Professional Education Business Manager, who led Shire Specialty Pharma’s efforts in this area, with support from Caroline West and Tom Glavin, the Shire Compliance team. Every request for funding of independent medical education in the US must now be submitted through a new website, www.shiregrants.com.
In keeping with guidance from the regulators, sales and marketing staff are explicitly excluded from any decision-making role in the process, and applications are assessed by a grants manager along with a physician from medical affairs, who has expertise in that particular therapeutic area. Our goal is to support the best and most topical medical education in the areas that Shire specializes in.
As Tiffany says, ‘The advantage of the web-based approach is that it not only ensures complete objectivity and efficiency in the receipt and processing of requests, it also provides us with a robust database that will enable us to better analyze what we have done and identify areas of educational need that could merit Shire support in the future.’
When the new site went live, we invited our major educational partners to come in to see us, to discuss how the new process would work, and give them an opportunity to raise any initial concerns. Few pharma companies have made time to do this, and it was certainly appreciated. As Lesley Downes, Director of Educational Services of Medscape, said, ‘The transition to the new process was very thorough and organized and it is transparent on how to work with Shire.’
(from the Shire Corporate Responsibility Report 2006).