Today, Stanford University is expected to announce that it will set strict limits on pharmaceutical industry financing of continuing education for doctors at its medical school. This marks a major change in policy, as traditionally, the pharmaceutical industry has paid for annual medical education courses at Standford and elsewhere. Stanford is changing the rules for financing such courses in an effort to lower the level of influence drugmakers have over physicians. Now, Stanford will no longer allow drug and device companies to choose which courses they intend to finance. Instead, they'll be asked to contribute to a pool of money that can be used for any continuing education class, including a class that might not mention their products at all.
In taking this step, Stanford is becoming the sixth major medical school to establish an educational pool, following the universities of Massachusetts, Colorado, Pittsburgh, California Davis and Kansas. (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has gone even further, banning all industry backing for its medical education classes.) Such pools follow advice from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which recommend them as a means of shielding teachers from commercial pressures.
To learn more about this decision:
- read this piece from The New York Times
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