E-DRUG: WHO and new IMS Institute (2)
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[Note from the Moderators: E-Drug tries to maintain a balance by allowing different views to be heard and making information available that is relevant to work in the essential medicines world; while we do try to prevent overt commercial 'advertising'. Having something published on E-Drug does not mean that E-Drug promotes it, but that it is believed to be of relevance and/or use to e-druggers. We welcome Christophe's view below and encourage other e-druggers to comment. ]
Dear E-Druggers
On 24 March 2011, E-drug posted a message which, under the title "Launch of new IMS Institute", simply reports an IMS press release and advertises an IMS commercial initiative (http://www.essentialdrugs.org/edrug/archive/201103/msg00028.php).
We are unaware of any written criteria that E-drug moderators use to guide their work. However, we are surprised to see E-drug advertising a commercial enterprise and IMS in particular. An exploration of both the IMS main website (http://www.imshealth.com) and that of the IMS Institute (http://www.theimsinstitute.org) confirms the purely commercial nature of IMS.
The fact that E-drug and the World Health Organization decided to promote IMS is cause of concern for, at least, the following two reasons:
a) IMS core business is the collection of prescription data from health professionals and its re-sale to pharmaceutical companies for the only purpose of increasing drug sales. This puts IMS at the very centre of commercial information exchanges and opaque interactions among health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry.
b) IMS has been successfully promoting the idea that prescription and drug utilisation data are of a proprietary nature, can be subtracted from the public domain and can be sold for a profit. We argue that such data are of a public nature and should be transparently collected through the established drug reimbursement and regulatory mechanisms to be freely used to design and evaluate pharmaceutical policies.
Consumption data are also epidemiologic data needed to determine the actual frequency of adverse effects, and are therefore key to establishing the harm-benefit balance of drugs on the market.
We think that, rather than promoting commercial interests, WHO should focus on developing guidance and assisting governmental institutions in collecting, processing and publishing drug utilisation data.
We look forward to an open discussion of this matter.
Christophe Kopp
Editor with Prescrire
Website: english.prescrire.org
Email: ckopp@prescrire.org