The international pharmaceutical industry has made significant efforts towards ensuring compliant and ethical communication and interaction with physicians and patients. This article presents the current status of the worldwide governance of communication practices by pharmaceutical companies, concentrating on prescription-only medicines. It analyzes legislative, regulatory, and code-based compliance control mechanisms and highlights significant developments, including the 2006 and 2012 revisions of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) Code of Practice. Developments in international controls, largely built upon long-established rules relating to the quality of advertising material, have contributed to clarifying the scope of acceptable company interactions with healthcare professionals. This article aims to provide policy makers, particularly in developing countries, with an overview of the evolution of mechanisms governing the communication practices, such as the distribution of promotional or scientific material and interactions with healthcare stakeholders, relating to prescription-only medicines.
A code of practice sets out how parmaceutical companies can promote medicines to health professionals and give information about prescription-only medicines to the public.
The introduction of Nurse Independent Prescribing and Nurse Supplementary Prescribing means that over 10 000 nurses across the UK have virtually the same prescribing rights as doctors. Nurses are therefore faced with the challenges of working with the pharmaceutical industry. Such challenges include the extent to which promotional material can be relied upon, the acceptability with regards to the provision of free samples, hospitality, gifts, and the sponsorship of meetings. The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry sets out how pharmaceutical companies are permitted to promote medicines to health professionals and others. It also covers the provision of information about prescription-only medicines to the public.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.