GMIA revises its new Code
June 25, 2010
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.
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