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The aim of the campaign is to create ‘PharmAware’ teaching hospitals, where interactions between health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry are strictly regulated. We hope to achieve this by writing a set of guidelines in consultation with key people within the trust and medical school, which will go on to be implemented as trust policy. This approach has already been achieved at three teaching hospitals some of the USAs most prestigious medical schools (Yale, Stanford, UPenn), whose experiences will be useful to the UK campaign.

The first stage in the policy process is to become familiar with all the existing guidelines relating to conflict of interest and interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. A consultation document has been created to lobby universities. The groundwork being done will be useful to UK campaign groups at all branches, however, each branch must eventually take responsibility for researching their own trust guidelines and identifying the appropriate channels to implement the policy in their trust. The policy writing process will be done in consultation with the relevant committee members at all Pharmaware branches. Both Bristol and Leeds branches are currently in the process of developing possible guidelines with their universities.

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines

Many of the world's most important medicines and public health devices are wholly or partly developed in academic laboratories. Their accessibility to those living in poor nations is profoundly affected by the research, licensing and patenting decisions made by universities. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines has a two-fold mission:

1. To determine how universities can help ensure that biomedical end products, such as drugs, are made more accessible in poor countries and

 2. To increase the amount of research conducted on neglected diseases, or those diseases predominantly affecting people who are too poor to constitute a market attractive to private-sector R&D investment.

In both cases, universities are well-placed to make a difference. University scientists are major contributors in the drug development pipeline. At the same time, universities have an avowed commitment to advancing the public good. As members of these universities, our fundamental goal is to hold them to this commitment.

The Philadelphia Consensus Statement provides a concise statement of the specific proposals.

This year PharmAware has decided to work within the UAEM campaign to change policy within campuses around the UK. Currently Edinburgh is the only university in the UK with a policy. Members in Leeds are working hard to ensure a second!

 

Information for Patients

All healthcare professionals aim to educate their patients, allowing for informed decisions to be made about treatment. However, a new European Commission proposal to increase information for patients has us concerned. The proposal appears to allow information directly from the pharmaceutical industry to patients, but not allowing for advertising (direct-to-consumer advertising as is currently in place in the USA and New Zealand). Healthcare professionals work hard to ensure that all research is peer-reviewed and critically appraised  to ensure that the medicine we practice is evidence-based to provide the best management for our patients.

With the healthcare professional removed from this process, there is less chance that this rigorous critical appraisal will take place. Patients may start to approach doctors requesting medications that are inappropriate, or not evidence-based, treatments (this is currently occuring throughout the USA and New Zealand where direct-to-consumer advertising is permitted). Doctors generally find it difficult to refuse to prescribe treatments expected by patients and therefore inappropriate presciption may occur.

Don't get us wrong - we would be happy to have more educated patients... if that source of education was unbiased and reliable. The worry is that we don't know where this education may be coming from. Until we can ensure that regulation is tight on what information is allowed to pass directly to patients, we will lobby our MPs and MEPs to ensure that if the proposal is passes, it will not adversely affect the health of our patients. Use our template as a starting point to write to your MP on this issue. You can find out who your MP/MEP is by visiting www.writetothem.com.

Ghostwriting

There has been much in the medical media this year about Ghostwriting. This is when the industry pays a professional to put their name on a piece of work, actually written by people in the industry. This is often not stated within the conflicts of interest in the journal and therefore of concern. We hope to campaign against this type of ghostwriting in the coming year.

University Curricula

One of PharmAware's main aims is to educate medical students to interact ethically and professionally with the pharmaceutical industry and therefore encourage evidence-based practice. Therefore, a large focus of pharmaware is to improve education within medical schools of practicing evidence-based medicine, how to critically appraise papers and implementing teaching on the interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and doctors.

Each university has differing needs according to what is in the current curriculum. We have had many successed over our few years and have PharmAware Special Study Modules in various universities across the UK. Work is continuing within each branch to improve the education for the UK's future doctors.

To find out more about any of our campaigns, contact us at info@pharmaware.co.uk.