Can we? Should we? Fostering trust through ethical practice: Insights from FPM Symposium 3rd November 2022
29th November 2022 by Laura Higgins
Our team recently partnered
and attended the FPM Symposium titled ‘Can we? Should we? Fostering trust
through ethical practice’. The symposium included an expert panel of speakers,
to name a few: Professor Chris Whitty, Professor Ben Goldacre, Trishna Bharadia
and more! The day provided thought-provoking talks and workshops with a wide
variety of speakers and was the first in-person symposium since 2019! If you
missed out on this amazing event, please see the insights gathered from the day
below:
Engaging and warm
welcome by Dr Flic Gabbay (President of FPM):
Dr Flic Gabbay started the
day with a warm and engaging welcome where she mentions the importance and need
for ethics and trust within pharma. Whilst the need for this has not changed,
patient empowerment included in pharma has! The increase in patient empowerment
has changed the way we innovate medicine for the future by securing the patient
as a significant stakeholder.
This welcome set a
precedent for the talks to come which touch on the importance of ethics and
virtue as essential assets, improving trust in industry and patient engagement
- evolving relationships with patients.
The biggest insights
gathered from the day were:
The importance of ethical
principles & virtue:
Professor Raanan Gillon presented an inspiring talk on the fundamental principles of medical ethics and virtue. The 4 fundamental principle of ethics include:
Professor Gillon
highlighted that virtues could be an additional ethics principle as virtue is
essential to the moral lives of real people. Virtue is concerned with people’s
way of life, including their attitudes and emotions which shapes their
character and decisions. Therefore, virtue enables one to discuss medical
ethics with people who have different overarching ethical frameworks e.g.,
colleagues and patients. When asked ‘why bother with ethical principles?’ it
allows us to differentiate from good or bad and allows pharmaceutical
physicians to effectively perform ethical decision-making.
Trust in healthcare and
the state:
Professor Ben Goldacre delivered
a fascinating and energizing session on the importance of publishing clinical
trial results. Professor Goldacre recommended a standardised approach to data
curation and increased transparency on publishing clinical trial results will
help ensure trust from patients and the public.
He also discussed the
fantastic resources such as open prescribing.net which facilitates the accessibility of NHS England
anonymised data and eutrialstracker.net which provides transparency for the % of EU clinical
trial results reported by sponsors. Professor Goldacre highlighted that through
this initiative huge improvements have been seen since January 2018 (49% of EU
trials reported). To date sponsors have collectively reported 84% of due
trials. A 2022 publication in Journal of Clinical
Epidemiology reports that the
UK ranked highly (93.6%) on the EU-CTR for clinical trials reported!
Additionally, it was great
to learn about opensafely.org the largest platform for NHS electronic health records which includes
unprecedented privacy. This open-source software facilitates health data
analytics while protecting confidential patient information.
Professor Chris Whitty
delivered an important talk on the role of the state in improving public health
and how public health intervention by the state should be balanced by
difficulty of the intervention, size of the health effect and strength of
evidence. This was demonstrated in as a ladder of possible state intervention
which ranged from providing public information, to introducing taxation and ultimately
making individual citizens subject to civil or criminal law.
Additionally, it was insightful
to see the effects of state health intervention in improving life expectancy
over the last 100 years. Examples included the implementation of legal
interventions to protect public health such as quarantine laws for infectious
diseases, regulations to raise food standards or reducing air and water pollution.
As well as those to prevent harmful occupational exposures or unethical
advertising; preventative measures such as screening and taxation; and the importance
of science-based medicine such as that during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A key take home message
from this session: ‘Prevention is better than cure’ Professor Chris
Witty
Patient engagement and perspective:
Trishna Bharadia and Dr
Lode Dewulf provided an interesting and interactive session on patient involvement
and empowerment in pharmaceutical medicine and ways to evolve the patient
relationship. This session highlighted the multitude and importance for
including and diversifying the patient population within pharmaceutical
medicine. The session also provided a space for open communication between
speakers and attendees, many of which were pharmaceutical physicians, where
expertise and key learnings could be sought.
The main concern within
industry is the requirement to engage with patients more on the development of
medicines. Trishna and Dr Dewulf highlight the importance of viewing patients
as people and making patient engagement more accessible in pharmaceutical
medicine. It is imperative that decision-making on the development of medicines
should be about patient needs and ensuring industry ask the right questions.
Additionally, when dealing with patient diversity in clinical trials, it is
important to contextualise according to the disease area to ensure correct
patient representativeness. By incorporating these factors, trust in medicines and
patient empowerment can be heightened.
A key take home message
from this session: ‘Working with patients just makes sense – it’s not
just the right thing to do, it’s the proper thing to do.’ Trishna Bharadia.
medDigital:
The symposium also provided
a great opportunity for medDigital to exhibit and showcase the important work
we do to overcome healthcare challenges and transform patients’ lives. Our work
within the life science industry is rooted in our core belief that we must
help, because everyone deserves access to the best information, treatments, and
care. Dr Felix Jackson (Founder & Medical Director, medDigital) shared a
case study which demonstrated insight discovery strategy.
The Ask: A pharmaceutical company was seeking to address
queries raised during the NICE re-appraisal of their existing treatment and
needed expert advice from oncology specialists.
The Solution: This was a cross-disciplinary activity that was
structured into 2 live meetings and an asynchronous online discussion.
We ran these via our in-house technologies and recruited clinicians,
researchers, and health economists.
The Benefit: The client was able to gather real-time advice from top UK specialists in oncology and include our executive scientific reports within their submission to NICE.
Overall, the panel
discussions and workshops provided a wonderful occasion to actively engage and
equip attendees with the correct tools to deal with ethics and compliance, the
importance of good communication, incorporating ethical thinking and factors
affecting trustworthiness in pandemic decision-making. Attendees were able to
conduct stimulating conversations where concerns from personal experiences
could be voiced and solutions actively developed.
Finally, it was a fantastic
opportunity to meet so many past, present, and potential colleagues. The FPM
Symposium team created an innovative and stimulating symposium with a great
location. Not to mention the food was incredible and we can’t wait for the next
symposium!
Here is our team at the FPM
Symposium 2022 below:
See you at the next FPM Symposium!