Sweden’s experience adopting the EFPIA Disclosure Code (Guest Blog)
27.10.15
Parallel to this actual code transposition, LIF also informed important stakeholders about the initiative trough meetings and personal communication. All major stakeholders was positive to the transparency initiative, with the result that LIF signed letters of intent with “The Swedish Medical Association” and “The Swedish Association of Health Professionals”, where they voice their support for the initiative.
LIF has also produced materials and guidance, aimed at pharmaceutical companies as well as HCPs and HCOs. We have produced an informative brochure about the initiative that can be ordered from LIFs website at no cost, with the intent to be used by the member companies when informing HCPs about this important initiative.
In September 2014, LIF sent a personal letter to every doctor in Sweden about the initiative. We wanted to make sure that all doctors were informed about the initiative in ample time before 2015, i.e. when the actual collection of data would take place by the pharmaceutical companies.
The feedback we get from our member companies is that this transparency initiative is being received quite well from the HCPs and HCOs in Sweden, thus we expect a high consent level from the HCPs.
For LIF Sweden, transparency and openness has always been important. We introduced our Collaboration database (In Swedish: LIFs Samarbetsdatabas) in 2004 for transparency when collaborating with patient organisations. The database evolved the following years to also include sponsorship to HCOs (Doctor’s associations) etc. Thus, the disclosure project is in line with earlier activities in the same vein.
The base for “EFPIA disclosure code” in Sweden will be the LIFs collaboration database – ensuring that the general public easily can access each company template.
