Posted by Michael Wonder on 18 Jan 2019
Patient groups fail to declare financial interests during NICE assessments
16 January 2019 - Patients’ groups involved in assessing treatments for the NHS often fail to disclose their financial interests, a review published in The BMJ shows.
More than two thirds of patient groups involved in NICE technology appraisals received funding from the manufacturer of the treatment being assessed or from a competitor, the review found. NICE decision makers were not aware of most of these competing interests.
Researchers led by Kate Mandeville at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine assessed 53 patient organisations that contributed to 41 NICE technology appraisals published in 2015 and 2016. Drug industry funding was determined from manufacturers’ disclosures and from patient organisations’ accounts, annual reports, websites, declarations of interests, and responses.
