The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry [ABPI] operates a Register called:
This is where you can search payments made by industry to healthcare practitioners [HCPs] and healthcare organisations [HPOs].
The ABPI state “We want to ensure that patients and others have confidence that this relationship is open and transparent and this is why the pharmaceutical industry is taking the lead on disclosing details of payments and other benefits in kind made by industry to HCPs and HCOs.”
The ABPI however do not make clear on the same homepage that the Register is compiled from voluntary submissions. As such, it is an incomplete register and we don’t even know how incomplete it is because the full dataset is not available.
As a Register it has multiple links with different formats for performing searches and in sharing results. It is difficult to navigate and it not easy to know if you have searched the right place and whether your search is complete.
For this post I have used the Disclosure UK register to search for payments made to the Royal College of Psychiatrists [RCPsych]. For the period of 2024, the RCPsych received £76,895 from pharmaceutical companies. This is an increase of 166% on the figure for 2023, which was in turn an increase of 107% of the figure for 2022.
This summary from ABPI details the payments made to RCPsych for 2024:
Unsure if my search of the Disclosure UK register was complete, I wondered whether AI would be able to help. This was the response I received:
Access to this kind of information regarding potential financial conflicts of interest is welcome. However, the fact that the Register is voluntary and incomplete seriously weakens its value to those seeking transparency. It is also disappointing that it is practically difficult to extract information from this format. Despite these difficulties, the database does show that the RCPsych receives significant income from the pharmaceutical industry and that this has been rising significantly over the years for which figures are available.