Sunshine on KOL : a retrospective study about financial ties between medical key opinion leaders and pharmaceutical industry in France

Abstract

Objective To investigate the nature, extent and evolution of financial relationships between key opinion leaders (KOL) or non-KOL physicians and pharmaceutical and device companies in France. Design Retrospective and descriptive study Setting All doctors practicing in France, with a focus on 548 KOL defined as board members of all the professional medical associations having published clinical practice guidelines in 2018 or 2019. These 99 associations were identified by the cross-checking of 3 databases. Main outcome measures The number and the amount of gifts (year by year since 2014), remunerations and agreements (year by year since 2017). Results Physicians had 818m Euros (936m dollars, 741m pounds) of gifts declared from 2014 to 2019. 83% of KOL had such links of interest. The 548 identified KOL represented 0.24% of physicians in France but received 1.5% of the total amount of gifts, i.e. 12.3m euros (14m dollars or 11m pounds / 3,700K euros per capita per year). Physicians had 125m Euros (143m dollars and 114m pounds) of agreements declared from 2017 to 2019. The 548 KOL received 0.72% of the agreements and 2.5% of the value of the agreements, i.e. 3.1m Euros (3.6m dollars, 2.8m pounds) or 1 900 euros per capita per year. Physicians had 156m Euros of remunerations declared from 2017 to 2019. The 548 identified KOL received 4.4% of the total value of remunerations to physicians, i.e. 6.8m Euros or 4 100 Euros per capita per year. Almost every professional medical associations (99%) had in their board at least one KOL with a financial tie. Conclusion Financial relationships between KOL and the industry in France are extensive, KOL have much more financial ties than non-KOL practitioners. The main limit of this study arises from the quality of information provided on the French Transparency in Healthcare database. Pre-registration: osf.io/m8syh

Pharmaceutical Industry Payments to Medical Oncologists in the Netherlands: Trends and Patterns Provided by an Open-Access Transparency Data Set

“…Medical oncologists receiving industry payments had significantly higher academic performance compared with their counterparts (eg, an M-index of 0.75 v 0.52, respectively; P < .05). In line with previous studies, 39,40,70,78 our data indicate that KOLs were more likely to receive payments and that their median value of payment was significantly higher (Tables 1 and 3).…”

General practitioners and sales representatives: Why are we so ambivalent?

“…Several French GPs said that sales reps were fewer and brought gifts less often. Other observational studies have arrived at the same conclusion [ 25 , 45 ].…”

“…Instead, they described a decrease in the frequency of medical visitors and in the size of the gifts offered to them. This decrease in the number and volume of gifts is confirmed by the analysis of the national “transparence-santé” database [ 45 ]. This decrease was used by doctors as an argument to trivialize the impact of sales rep visits on their practice.…”

“…The development of convenient, non-biased, and individual continuing medical education is therefore a public health necessity. Developing and valuing the independence of experts who speak at conferences and in learned societies is also necessary for the development of a culture of independence in health [ 2 , 45 , 60 ].…”