Pharmaceutical and Medical Device
The demand for medical and healthcare products and services has significantly increased in recent years, and the quality of these products and services remains a key public concern. Practitioners of the medical and healthcare industries should maintain high integrity standards for ensuring service and product quality, as well as sustaining their goodwill, public trust and competitive edge in the market.
The Private Sector Integrity Centre (PSIC) offers anti-corruption and integrity training to help practitioners remain vigilant to corruption risks and uphold high integrity standards. We also provide corruption prevention advisory services and practical resources to help professions and companies strengthen safeguards and foster an ethical culture.
Corruption Risks
- Offering donations to research institutions or healthcare professionals with the aim of securing favourable consideration of a product in the research and development process.
- Offering advantages to public servants to expedite patent applications or product registration processes.
- Offering advantages to auditors in exchange for the certification of pharmaceutical products or medical devices (e.g. GMP certification, ISO certification).
- Accepting advantages from suppliers in return for procuring products or product ingredients.
- Accepting advantages from suppliers in exchange for assisting them in inflating the prices of medical products or for conniving at their substandard quality.
- Offering advantages to healthcare professionals in return for recommending particular drugs or medical equipment in assessment processes or drug enlistment applications.
- Obtaining confidential tendering information by offering advantages to healthcare professionals involved in the process.
- Sponsoring healthcare professionals to attend overseas conferences in exchange for using or recommending the company’s products.
- Providing frequent or lavish entertainment to healthcare professionals who have the authority to recommend or select drugs or medical devices for their respective institutions.
- Accepting advantages from clients in exchange for allocating high-demand products on a preferential basis.
- Diverting business to competitors or companies in which one has a financial interest in return for rebates.
- Accepting advantages in exchange for disclosing proprietary information to competitors.
- Accepting advantages from contractors in return for placing service orders (e.g. logistics services for product delivery).
- Accepting advantages in exchange for granting discounts or benefits to ineligible clients.
- Providing excessive product samples to healthcare professionals for improper purposes.
- Falsifying stock or inventory records to conceal the pilferage of product samples or promotional items.
- Abusing staff purchase schemes by reselling products for personal gain.
- Having financial interest in a medical supplies company that is a potential supplier.
- Handling procurement matters where one of the tendering or bidding companies is operated by a relative.
- Serving on a recruitment panel while a close personal friend is one of the candidates.
- Undertaking part-time employment with a competitor or a contractor.
Resources
Integrity Training
The Private Sector Integrity Centre (PSIC) offers free anti-corruption and integrity training to help pharmaceutical and medical device industries build an ethical corporate culture and prevent corruption and fraud.
PSIC organises webinars on the “PSIC Channel” for business practitioners across various sectors and industries. Click here to view details of the upcoming webinars and enroll now!
User-friendly e-learning materials are available:
Online Ethics Resources for the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industries
