2009-09-15 19:05:02 -

The Stanford University School of Medicine has joined a small cadre of medical schools nationwide in publicly disclosing information about the consulting activities of its 1,400 affiliated faculty. As of Aug. 26, the academic profiles on the school’s Web site include a section about faculty members’ consulting relationships with specific companies.

While researchers and clinicians have been required every year to report their relationships with private industry as part of the school’s process of managing potential conflicts of interest, the school’s posting of this information on the Internet aims to make it widely available to the public.

“I have tremendous respect for the integrity of our faculty at Stanford and respect the collaborative work they do to advance knowledge and, where appropriate,

to engage in effective interactions with industry,” said Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. “Because perceptions about such interactions can sometimes be misleading, we have come to the conclusion that public disclosure serves the best interests of our faculty, Stanford University and the public we serve.”


The move is part of a trend among academic medical centers to be more transparent about the financial ties of their physicians to pharmaceutical companies and device makers. Last December, the Cleveland Clinic became the first medical center in the country to make its faculty’s consulting relationships public. The University of Pennsylvania soon followed suit, and other academic medical centers are said to be weighing similar policies.

“I think it’s very important that leading academic medical centers are doing this,” said David Korn, MD, vice provost for research at Harvard and a former dean of Stanford’s medical school. Until last November, he was chief scientific officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, where he served on a task force that urged all medical schools and teaching hospitals to prohibit drug industry gifts and services to physicians, faculty and trainees, and to curtail industry involvement in continuing medical education activities.

Korn said the move toward greater public disclosure of academic-industry relationships “is important not only for protecting the self-governance of the medical profession, but because what they’re doing is changing the educational environment for future physicians and scientists. And one would hope that a new generation of professionals will have different standards and relationships with vendors.”

Under Stanford’s policy, first announced in April, the school’s Web site now lists the companies in which faculty members receive payments of $5,000 or more for consulting activities, such as board memberships, talks or advisory service. The postings reflect the information annually submitted by all faculty members to the school covering their ongoing consulting relationships. The Web site also includes any equity or royalty payments of $5,000 or more in public companies and any equity in privately held firms for which faculty members do consulting work.

Harry Greenberg, MD, senior associate dean for research at the medical school, said Stanford values industry relationships, as these connections enable faculty to translate what they have learned in the laboratory or clinic into technologies that aid society.

“Industry relations are overall of great benefit to patients and, absent collaboration with the private sector, many of our scientists’ discoveries could not be translated into therapies that enhance health and save lives,” said Greenberg. “The only issue in the academia-industry relationship is that you have to make sure you do it the right way.” Under school policy, faculty may devote 13 days every quarter to consulting work, he noted.

“The consulting activities of our faculty are part of their professional activities and speak to the fact that, in many cases, our faculty are world-class experts in their fields and are sought out to help society in a variety of ways,” he said. “Just as our faculty’s educational experience or their research are descriptive of their professional activities, so are their consulting activities. So we felt it be useful to include this information in our professional faculty profiles.”

The change comes amid growing public concern about the financial connections between academicians and their industry counterparts. U.S.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has proposed federal legislation that would require device and pharmaceutical companies to report specific payments they make to physicians. Some states, such as Minnesota and Vermont, already have adopted similar measures, and several companies have announced they will voluntarily post all payments they make to doctors for speaking, consulting and related activities on publicly accessible Web sites.

Stanford’s medical school has been at the forefront of the movement to ensure the integrity of industry-academic interactions. In 2006, the school adopted a policy prohibiting physicians from accepting gifts from companies, including free meals and drug samples. The policy also limited industry marketing at the medical center and put some restrictions on industry support of educational activities.

Stanford went even further in 2008, becoming one of the few schools to enact a policy prohibiting pharmaceutical companies and device makers from providing direct support for continuing medical education programs for physicians.

The online disclosure of faculty consulting relationships is the school’s latest step in the process of ensuring that a faculty member’s personal financial interests do not influence or bias his/her research, patient care and teaching. The information now available in the professional faculty profiles was culled from data collected in the faculty’s 2008 annual reports. Every year, when a faculty member updates his or her annual conflict-of-interest report to the school, this information will automatically be uploaded in the faculty member’s profile.

The information can be accessed at: med.stanford.edu/profiles/ : .

For more background on Stanford’s policies on collaborations with industry, go to med.stanford.edu/coi/ : .



The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top 10 medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit mednews.stanford.edu : .

The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. For information about all three, please visit stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html : .

Stanford University School of MedicineRuthann Richter,

650-725-8047 (Print Media) richter1@stanford.edu : mailto:richter1@stanford.edu M.A.
Malone, 650-723-6912 (Broadcast Media) mamalone@stanford.edu : mailto:mamalone@stanford.edu