Project Lead: Claudia Wild
Author: Ozren Sehic
Publication: May 2021
Language: German (with English summary)
As patient organisations continue to professionalise and expand their activities, their need for financial resources is also increasing, which is often covered by pharmaceutical companies. In order to make these financial flows more transparent, the pharmaceutical industry has responded with voluntary commitments to greater transparency. The AIHTA (then still known as LBI-HTA) systematically analysed this data on sponsorship of patient initiatives for the first time in 2014 and aims to carry out consistent and ongoing monitoring of payments. The present fourth update of the systematic analysis investigated the extent to which patient initiatives in Austria were financially supported by pharmaceutical companies in 2019.
In 2019, only 39 out of a total of 115 PHARMIG member companies disclosed financial contributions to patient initiatives. Compared to 2018, the disclosure rate dropped from 43 to 34 per cent, while at the same time there was a significant increase in the amount of money declared by 37 per cent to around 2.3 million euros. In 2019, the areas of haemato-oncology (around 16 per cent of the total) and haemophilia (around 13 per cent) received the largest share, followed by lung diseases, diabetes and metabolic diseases.