Trust and transparency in the pharmaceutical industry: How far have we come?
Date – Tuesday 10 September 2019
Venue – Dickens Library, Mary Ward House Conference and Exhibition Centre, 5 – 7 Tavistock Place London, WC1H 9SN
Event description
It is 2019 and the pharmaceutical industry still struggles to be trusted. Reports of falsifying data, bribery and corruption, price hikes and manipulative patent litigation have steadily soured the public’s view of the pharmaceutical industry. Yet, the drugs that pharmaceutical companies produce save millions of lives a year and improve the lives of millions more. So, what is going wrong?
Pharmaceutical companies have made only modest progress in improving trust over the last few years. The Edelman ‘Trust Barometer’ shows that, globally, public trust in the industry has edged up marginally from 55% in 2015 to 57% in 2019. In the UK the figure is 50% in 2019. Why is it not higher for an industry whose business is saving lives?
• How can the industry restore its credibility in the eyes of patients, policymakers and the rest of the taxpaying public?
• Are prices too high? What can we do about it?
• Is moving from clinical medicine to a job in industry still thought of as moving to the ‘dark side’? Why?
• ‘Patient-centricity’ and ‘patient engagement’ How can it make a real difference? Can familiarity breed trust?
• Do companies adequately and accurately warn patients and clinicians about the risks as well as the benefits of taking medicines?
These are key questions that the pharmaceutical industry continues to grapple with, as trust and transparency holds more weight among the public than ever before. We, as doctors working in all aspects of the industry – companies, regulators, academia – must do more, in the interests of patients and wider society. We must strive for greater engagement and understanding, and further development of appropriate regulations and guidelines.
In this FPM ‘conversation’ event we brought together a panel of leaders in this field to discuss issues around public trust and transparency:
Mike Thompson, Chief Executive, ABPI
Alastair Benbow, Chief Development and Medical Officer, Norgine
Fiona Fox, CEO, Science Media Centre