ArticleBMJ open2020
Under-reported relationship: a comparative study of pharmaceutical industry and patient organisation payment disclosures in the UK (2012-2016).
Article in BMJ open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Patient organizations involvement in healthcare: a rapid review and conceptual framework.Globalization and health · 2026Review
- Information About Canadian Patient Groups' Conflicts of Interest and Industry Funding-Incomplete, Inconsistent, and Unreliable: A Cross-Sectional Study.International journal of social determinants of health and health services · 2025Article
- Commercial influences on patient and public involvement: a renewed call for research and action.Health promotion international · 2024Article
- Article
- International comparison of pharmaceutical industry payment disclosures in the UK and Japan: implications for self-regulation, public regulation, and transparency.Globalization and health · 2023Article
- Disclosure of Pharmaceutical Industry Funding of Patient Organisations in Nordic Countries: Can Industry Self-Regulation Deliver on its Transparency Promise?International journal of health services : planning, administration, evaluation · 2022Article
- Responding to the opioid crisis in North America and beyond: recommendations of the Stanford-Lancet Commission.Lancet (London, England) · 2022Review
- Review
- A hidden web of policy influence: The pharmaceutical industry's engagement with UK's All-Party Parliamentary Groups.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo examine the under-reporting of pharmaceutical company payments to patient organisations by donors and recipients.
designComparative descriptive analysis of payments disclosed on drug company and charity regulator websites.
settingUK.
participants87 donors (drug companies) and 425 recipients (patient organisations) reporting payments in 2012-2016.
main outcome measuresNumber and value of payments reported by donors and recipients; differences in reported payments from/to the same donors and recipients; payments reported in either dataset but not the other one; agreement between donor-recipient ties established by payments; overlap between donor and recipient lists and, respectively, industry and patient organisation data.
resultsOf 87 donors, 63 (72.4%) reported payments but 84 (96.6%) were mentioned by recipients. Although donors listed 425 recipients, only 200 (47.1%) reported payments. The number and value of payments reported by donors were 259.8% and 163.7% greater than those reported by recipients, respectively. The number of donors with matching payment numbers and values in both datasets were 3.4% and 0.0%, respectively; for recipients these figures were 7.8% and 1.9%. There were 24 and 3 donors missing from industry and patient organisation data during the entire study period, representing 38.1% and 3.6% of those in the respective datasets. The share of donor-recipient ties in which industry and patient organisation data agreed about donors and recipients was 38.9% and 68.4% in each dataset, respectively. Of 63 donors reporting payments, only 3 (4.8%) had their recipient lists fully overlapping with patient organisation data. Of 200 recipients reporting industry funding, 102 (51.0%) had their donor lists fully overlapping with industry data.
conclusionsBoth donors and recipients under-reported payments. Existing donor and recipient disclosure systems cannot manage potential conflicts of interest associated with industry payments. Increased standardisation could limit the under-reporting by each side but only an integrated donor-recipient database could eliminate it.
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