Pharma Invests £377m in UK R&D Collaborations, New ABPI Figures Showed

04 July 2019

GMP News

New figures published by the ABPI show that pharma invests £377m in UK R&D collaborations, working with healthcare professionals and organisations to improve care for NHS patients.

The data published on Disclosure UK shows that the industry spent £377.3m on collaborations relating to R&D activities in the UK during 2018, an increase from £370.9m in 2017, signalling the strength of the sector through a period of economic uncertainty.

Disclosure UK is the pharmaceutical industry-led database of payments and benefits in kind made to UK healthcare professionals (HCPs) and organisations (HCOs).

It was introduced to increase transparency about collaborations between individual doctors and organisations – including NHS Trusts and research centres – and pharmaceutical companies. Disclosure UK is part of a wider European initiative and is now in its fourth year.

The 2018 figures show:

In 2018, 57.2% of healthcare professionals agreed for the payments they receive from pharmaceutical companies to be made public on Disclosure UK, a significant improvement on 49% in 2017.

“We can’t discover new medicines without the expertise of research bodies, doctors and nurses. It’s vital that companies can collaborate with those people, and that we’re open and transparent about any payments we make to them. The continued investment from companies is excellent news at a time of economic uncertainty and signals the strength of the sector in the UK.

said Mike Thompson, Chief Executive of the ABPI,

“Everybody working with the pharmaceutical industry should publish the details of their work so that the public can be confident about those relationships and understand the importance of this collaboration towards improved healthcare. We’re moving in the right direction but there’s clearly much more to be done to convince doctors of the importance of being more open about the money they receive.”

Across Europe, pharmaceutical companies are publicly disclosing the payments they make to healthcare professionals and organisations. Britain’s Disclosure UK represents significant efforts by the industry to be transparent in the UK.

Before publishing data about how they’ve paid HCPs or HCOs, UK data protection law requires pharmaceutical companies to request explicit consent from doctors to be able to publish their information online. Without this permission from healthcare professionals, companies cannot publicly disclose the names of the people they have worked with.

The industry’s ambition is for full transparency about how and why they pay healthcare professionals for their work and we will continue to work closely with the NHS and others to drive this forward.

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