Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18306

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

GMIA revises its new Code
Pharmacy Daily 2010 Jun 25
www.pharmacydaily.com.au

Full text:

THE Generic Medicines Industry Association has revised its proposed Code of Practice, taking into account objections
raised by the industry to its previous version (PD 13 Apr).

The revision has seen a change to the make up of the Code of Complaints Committee- from an even ratio of member company
representatives to independent members, to five independent members from across a range of disciplines and three member
company representatives.

The Committee will comprise an independent chairman (with experience in trade practices); as well as consumer, pharmacy
and medical representatives plus three member company representatives (including a GMiA board member).

Company reps sitting on the board must declare any conflict of interest before their ‘ad hoc’ appointment to the
Committee.

Despite industry objections, GMiA has also held firm to its position that under the Code members would not have to
report “educational benefits” provided to pharmacists.

Whilst it did concede that a “small benefit” of greater public transparency would be gained by reporting pharmacist
events, it argued that this would be outweighed by a greater “public detriment” created by possible public
misunderstanding of pharmacists’ motives when recommending medications that transparency would create.

“The public may gain the erroneous impression from educational event reporting that a particular educational event may
have influenced a pharmacist to recommend a particular generic medicine, when in actual fact there were a range of other
factors which contributed to that decision” it said.

The association said transparency would not reveal the “true nature” of relationships with pharmacists because of other
factors such as corporate and brand awareness, product quality, certainty of supply, returns policy, trading terms,
packaging and labeling, possibility of patient confusion, substitutability, price benefit to patient, and additional
supplier support programs offered – unlike the situation for prescribers where the relationships are more defined.

GMiA also argued that tracking pharmacist event costs would cause extra costs which were likely to be passed onto
consumers.