New Research out of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) reveals that the Irish healthcare and hospital sector received more than €2 million in “educational” contributions over a three-year span from medical device firms serving them. This discovery has led to Ireland being identified as the fifteenth largest beneficiary of funds from the medical device industry. Consequently, this finding has led researchers to advocate for the establishment of compulsory reporting responsibilities.
The RCSI-led study unveiled that from 2017 to 2019, around 116 medical device corporations declared over €425 million of “educational” payments throughout 53 nations, thus spotlighting a substantial potential for clash of interests. These payments, intended to promote the education of physicians and other health professionals via fellowships, grants, scholarships, and “educational events”, are voluntarily disclosed to a database managed by MedTechEurope, a medical device trade group.
This has led the researchers to believe that their findings might not completely cover the full scope of such payments. This largest-ever research on conflicts of interest within the European medical device industry has been published in the Health Policy and Technology journal.
Ireland’s position as the 15th-largest recipient of funds calls attention to how its per-capita funding surpasses that of Germany and Denmark among others. To increase the transparency surrounding these payments, the main researcher of the study, James Larkin, spoke about the necessity for a mandatory system, similar to those in the US, France or Italy, – primarily as an anti-corruption measure.
He emphasized how such payments from the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry can sometimes tempt people to prescribe specific medicines or procure certain medical devices, necessitating some form of monitoring to flag any alarming situations. The secondary reason he highlighted is that these payments are often linked with diminished quality in prescribing and procurement of medical devices, requiring a comprehensive understanding of these transactions to guarantee that patients get the highest standard of care.
Dr Piotr Ozieranski, a collaborator from the Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy at the University of Bath, remarked, “In a situation where you’re undergoing a pacemaker implantation, there’s an expectation the device is selected based on the priority of patient welfare, not influenced by any financial benefit. The risk is significant if this principle is compromised, as demonstrated by the crisis involving mesh implants.”