all Institute for Health Policy stories

Policies regarding IRB members’ industry contacts often lacking

50443248 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:01:00 -0400

At a time of heightened concern about conflicts of interest posed by relationships between academic medical researchers and commercial firms, a new study finds that a significant number of academic institutions do not have clear policies covering the industrial relationships of members of institutional review boards (IRBs), committees charged with ensuring that clinical studies uphold patient rights and follow ethical guidelines.

Information Age will change doctors' role in healing

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:25:14 -0400

Even as the Internet allows patients access to information previously only available through their doctors, patients still trust the information they get from their doctors more than they do from Web sites, current surveys suggest. Because of this, doctors may fill the role of advisers or consultants, helping patients not only sort through the information that is available, but make rational decisions based on that information. Writing in the Milbank Quarterly, Professor of Medicine David Blumenthal explains that with an increasing number of patients having access to an increasing amount of health information through the Internet, doctors are losing their place in society as the exclusive source of medical knowledge. This trend has the potential, at a minimum, to greatly reduce the current imbalance in competence between doctors and laypersons, possibly resulting in a de-professionalization of medicine. "Supported by humanity's need for a healing class and by physicians' genuine technical competence, the [medical] profession will survive," says Blumenthal, of Massachusetts General Hospital. "However, the work it does will likely change somewhat, as will its role in society and the relationships between doctors and patients."

Study examines data withholding in academic genetics

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:19:28 -0400

Eric G. Campbell, of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues recently surveyed geneticists and other life scientists at the 100 U.S. universities that received the most funding from the National Institutes of Health in 1998. Data was received from a total of 1,240 geneticists and 600 non-geneticists. The survey showed that 47 percent of geneticists who asked other faculty for additional information, data, or materials relating to published scientific findings had been denied at least once in the past three years. Among the geneticists responding to the survey, 12 percent said they had denied requests from other researchers for their own information or materials. They cited many reasons for their withholding, including a lack of such resources as money and time and the need to protect their own and their colleagues' ability to publish future research findings. "The ability to reproduce science is important," says Campbell. "When people don't share published resources, it may slow the rate of scientific advance." Campbell is first author of the report that appeared in the January 23, 2002 Journal of the American Medical Association.