Washington Post: RxP director says proposed NIH rules are step in right direction

05/20/2010

New proposed rules from the National Institutes of Health today on managing researchers' financial conflicts would require some payments to be publicly disclosed and lower the threshold of payments that are required to be reported to the NIH.

That's a step in the right direction, Pew Prescription Project director Allan Coukell told the Washington Post. Much of the proposed rule is in keeping with the Project's comments to the NIH in July 2009, though it recommended investigators be required to disclose all payments to their institution; the proposed rule exempts those below $5000.

The Project has worked to promote transparency at academic medical centers, and supported the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which will establish a publicly accessible database for drug and device companies to disclose all payments to physicians beginning in 2013.

A spokesman for the NIH said that the "Sunshine database will be one tool among many" that federal regulators and institutions will use to assess conflicts of interest.

Read more about the Pew Prescription Project and Community Catalyst's joint comments to the NIH at the PostScript blog.