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There is much evidence of bias in research on the effectiveness and efficacy of drugs as a result of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. The purpose of this paper is to present the views of those involved in a major evidence-based policy initiative from Canada and examine the adequacy of existing academic conflict of interest (COI) rules.

Data came from the Alzheimer’s Drug Therapy Initiative in British Columbia, a coverage with evidence development (CED) initiative, where a form of action research collected insights from the authors’ experiences, combined with qualitative interviews with members of the research team.

The majority of researchers perceive the influence of pharmaceutical manufacturers as problematic. Even when the strictest of COI rules are followed, extending well beyond disclosure, the reach of industry is so great that existing COI rules lag far behind their expanding influence.

The authors support others who call for the funding of independent research, enforcement of existing disclosure rules, and unfettered publication rights. In addition, the authors urge the education of all research team members, including clinicians, on the evidence indicating the variety of forms through which industry influence is exerted. The authors believe that this awareness-raising can help toward minimizing that influence in the analyses that are conducted.

Consideration of pharmaceutical influence on CED research is important. There may be an untrue assumption that CED is functioning at arms-length from the drug companies.

Purpose – Although the US has lagged behind international developments in health technology assessment (HTA), renewed interest in HTA in the US has been fueled by the appropriation of $1.1 billion comparative effectiveness research (CER) in 2009 and the debate over health care reform.

Approach – To inform CER practices in the US, we present case studies of HTA from England/Wales and Germany: contrasting methods; relevance to the US; and impact on innovation.

Findings – The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) was established in 1999 to inform trusts within the National Health Service of England and Wales. It uses cost-effectiveness analysis to guide the allocation resource across preventative and curative interventions. In Germany, the Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG) was established in 2004 to inform reimbursement and pricing policies for the statutory sickness funds set by the Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss (G-BA). IQWiG evaluates competing technologies within specific therapeutic areas, placing more weight on clinical evidence and the relative efficiency of competing therapies.

Practical implications – Although having deep political and cultural antecedents, differences between NICE and IQWiG can be explained by perspective: the former guiding resource allocation across an entire system (macro-evaluation), the latter focusing on efficiency within the bounds of a particular therapeutic area (micro-evaluation). Given the decentralized nature of the US health care system, and the relative powers of different medical specialties, the IQWiG model presents a more suitable case study to guided CER efforts in the US.

In this study, the authors aimed to explore consumer perspectives on accelerated access to medicines. The authors were particularly interested in how they balance competing considerations of safety, efficacy, equity and access; whether and how their views change when there are different levels of uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of new medicines; and the procedures that they think should be used to make decisions about accelerated access to new medicines.

This was an exploratory qualitative study. Thirteen semi-structured interviews with patient advocates and two focus groups with patients were conducted and analysed thematically. Interviews and focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis.

Participants outlined a range of justifications for accelerated access, including addressing unmet medical needs and encouraging further research and development. However, they were also cognisant of the potential risks and viewed ongoing data collection, disinvestment and market withdrawal as ways to address these. They also emphasised the importance of transparent decisions being made by people with relevant expertise, based on a thorough consideration of scientific evidence and stakeholder perspectives.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore Australian consumers' views of accelerated access to medicines. The results suggest that consumers want timely access to new medicines, but not at the expense of safety, efficacy, equity and sustainability. While accelerated access programs are likely to be welcomed by consumers, they must be fully informed of their conditions and limitations, and robust post-market data surveillance must be implemented and enforced to protect the interests of both individual patients and the broader community.

This study aims to offer novel insights on how industrial marketing might contribute to bringing innovations to market in the peculiar case of health care. This study aims at shedding first light on how the alignment between dissemination and exploitation activities might contribute to bringing to market innovations developed by public–private partnerships funded by the European Commission (EC).

The theoretical development comes from an inductive research design based on the 42-month pan-European H2020 research project NESTORE aimed at developing an integrated portfolio of innovations for the healthy aging of European citizens.

This study advances the theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care by conceptualizing an actionable method to align dissemination and exploitation activities within EC-funded projects, facilitating that innovations will go to market. The method is composed of five phases. First, an external analysis to define market opportunities and users’/stakeholders’ needs. Second, an internal analysis to identify the most promising exploitable outputs. Third, scenarios crystallization to define the most suitable scenarios (business models) to bring the selected exploitable outputs to market. Fourth, exploitation and dissemination alignment through the identification and involvement of the most relevant stakeholders. Fifth, scenario refinement and business plan.

This study is relevant because many EC-funded projects still fail to move innovations from labs to market, thus limiting the benefits for the European citizens and the competitiveness of Europe with respect to the USA and China. Although this relevance, past studies overlooked the peculiar context of EC-funded innovation projects, privileging pharmaceutical and biomedical companies. This study advance theory and practice of industrial marketing in health care.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and review the available literature on ethical/unethical behaviour of pharmaceutical companies and to determine the ethical issues, unethical behaviour by analysing, summarising and categorising the factors related to these issues and unethical behaviour as were studied during the period 2008-2017. Essentially, this paper presents a critical analysis of the available literature on the subject and avenues for future research.

This paper adopted the systematic review approach to achieve the purpose of this study and examines the most relevant literature from online existing database sources, available between 2008-2017 by using the keyword search method. Then studies are categorised and summarised, using previously developed theories and frameworks, which have provided evidence to the universal consensus that ethical behavioural outcomes are dependent on the interplay of individual, organisational and environmental factors and have reordered to fulfil the purpose.

The findings identify that ethical issues related to pharmaceutical companies as were studied during the period 2008-2017 are drug pricing, drug safety and gift-giving. The organisational variables appeared to be the dominant cause of these ethical issues and unethical practices along with other determinants such as environmental and stakeholders. A large number of studies were in the western country context. Theoretical research has studied more comparatively empirical studies.

This review provides insights for understanding the ethical issues, unethical behaviour and determinants related to these issues of pharmaceutical companies and provides insights where the literature is standing. This review only includes studies between 2008-2017, which are related to the ethical issue of pharmaceutical companies, therefore, the view is only of the past 10 years papers. This review provides gaps and insight into the source of ideas for future research and will help the researchers in guiding ethics-related information in the context of pharmaceutical companies.

This study will help the practitioners and policymakers in informing about the issues that required the urgent need to solve and will shed some light to focus and formulate strategies for successful competitive advantage. This study will help researchers who are seeking information related to ethics and ethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies.

To the best of my knowledge, this review of understanding ethical/unethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies of the past 10 years between 2008-2017 has not been done to date. This study is filling the gap by bringing all the information about ethics in pharmaceutical companies at one place, which works as an index of ethics-related study in this specific pharmaceutical company context.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

Pledging collateral to secure loans is a prominent feature in financing contracts around the world. Existing theories disagree on why borrowers pledge collateral. It is even more challenging to understand why in some countries collateral coverage exceeds, for example, 300% of the value of a loan. This study looks at the association between collateral coverage and country-level governance and various institutional proxies. It investigates the economic implications of steep collateral coverage and sketches policy options to lower ex-ante asymmetric information and ex-post agency problems. Within this framework, should a lender collect the debt forcibly on default and liquidated assets fetch prices below outstanding loan values, the lender’s loss is covered through credit insurance, which would significantly reduce the need for steep collateral coverage. This proposal may increase level of private credit, investment and growth; particularly, in a number of developing countries where collateral spread is the main inhibitor of finance.

This study investigates, from a resource dependence perspective, the effects of domestic private firms' political connections and economic power on their labor law compliance in China.

This study used data from a large-scale nationwide survey on Chinese domestic private firms, the Chinese Private Enterprise Survey collected from 2004 to 2012, to examine factors of interest that affect firms' compliance to labor laws. Hypotheses were tested using OLS regression models with robust standard errors.

The results indicate that domestic private firms' institutional political connections specified by the presence of a union or a Chinese Communist Party committee is positively related to firms' labor law compliance, and firm owners' formal political connections indicated by their membership in the People's Congress or the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference have a somewhat negative effect. The post-hoc analysis shows that firm owners' political representation at the county and city levels is negatively related with labor law compliance, while the political representation at the national level is positively related to labor law compliance. Moreover, the economic power of a domestic private firm is related positively to its labor law compliance. Finally, although the authors did not find evidence that the 2008 Labor Contract Law increased labor contract coverage, it did increase pension coverage after 2008.

The present study reveals a more refined relationship between domestic private firm owners’ political connections and the degree of labor law compliance. It also demonstrates that the economic power of domestic private firms has a positive effect on their labor law compliance. This implies the importance of the contribution of domestic private firms to economic and social development in China, warranting continued support of the development of the private sector in China.

This study adds to the sparse literature on the determinants of domestic private firms' labor law compliance in China. It also sheds light on whether political connections and the rising economic power of Chinese domestic private firms influence their compliance with labor laws.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides: