Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18931

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Harvey urges GMiA data
Pharmacy Daily 2010 Oct 6

Full text:

HEALTH activist Ken Harvey from La Trobe University has suggested that
the Generic Medicines Industry Association provide “pooled data from its
members on the exact monetary value (and type) of the non-price benefits
provided to pharmacy”.

In a resonse to the ongoing ACCC enquiry into the GMiA Code of Conduct,
Harvey says assertions in the GMiA application that non- price benefits
to pharmacy owners amount to less than 1% of total benefits should be
backed up by figures from member firms.

‘Failure to disclose this data creates a perception that member
companies of GMiA have something to hide,” he said.

He also argues that pooled data would eliminate commercial in-
confidence concerns held by individual companies and would also “enable
an independent judgement to be made of the potential impact of such
benefits”.

Harvey also hit out at GMiA’s response to the ACCC that “the
relationship between the supplier and the pharmacy does not influence or
change the type of generic medicine dispensed and therefore there is
little or no impact on the patient”, citing the GMiA code which
acknowledges that ‘marketing of generic medicines typically seeks to
change behaviour at the point of dispensing, not at the point of
prescribing’.

“If a pharmacist switches patient’s generic brands purely as a result of
industry promotional activities such as cruises, reward schemes and
discounting this is likely to produce unnecessary patient confusion,
compliance problems and impaired health outcomes,” Harvey said.