Mandatory Disclosure of Pharmaceutical Industry-Funded Events for Health Professionals

We are in a period of unprecedented scrutiny of the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and doctors [1–4]. Legislators are now considering how they might become involved in the regulation of these practices. This is a telling comment on the perceived failure of the medical profession to regulate itself and of self-regulation by industry. But reliable and comprehensive data on the nature and extent of industry sponsorship are rare. Several states in the US have mandatory disclosure laws for physician payments, but these data have proved difficult to access and analyse [5]. The US Congress is considering new mechanisms for revealing industry–professional interactions (the so-called ‘‘Sunshine’’ Acts) [6,7]. One of the first countries to move towards greater transparency was Australia. The pharmaceutical industry representative body, Medicines Australia, has a self-regulatory Code of Conduct that sets standards for the ethical marketing and promotion of prescription pharmaceutical products for its member companies. In addition to monitoring of promotional activities, a Code of Conduct Committee adjudicates on complaints regarding pharmaceutical company activities [8]. In 2007, the Australian Competition Tribunal placed disclosure requirements on Medicines Australia. It approved that body’s Code of Conduct for industry– professional relationships on the condition that details of every sponsored event, including the costs of any hospitality, were posted on their website [9,10]. Reporting commenced in July 2007 and data are updated six monthly [8]. In this Policy Forum we examine the Australian data and argue that although a definite advance, the Australian disclosure requirements fall short of what is required. We propose more comprehensive reporting standards, which should have application to other settings and jurisdictions.