english.prescrire.org > Spotlight > Archives : 2018 > Independence, in the service of patients' best interests

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Independence, in the service of patients' best interests

Prescrire is 100% financed by its subscribers, which guarantees its freedom from the influence of any special interests – be they industrial or institutional. This is the precondition for reliable, unbiased information and continuing education for healthcare professionals.

In recent years, particularly in the wake of the Mediator° (benfluorex) disaster in France, the general public has become more aware of the potential for conflicts of interest within the healthcare arena: connections between manufacturers of medicinal products and healthcare professionals, their teachers, their experts and health sector decision-makers are likely to have a negative impact on the quality of patient care. For example, when a healthcare professional prescribes a new drug that is heavily promoted instead of an existing drug that is better known and whose harm-benefit balance is more favourable for the patient.

Awareness of this public health problem among students in the health professions is also important, and a growing number of medical student unions are rejecting pharmaceutical company funding so as to be free from their influence.

Prescrire has been fulfilling healthcare professionals' desire for independence since 1981. Association Mieux Prescrire, a non-profit continuing education organisation (under the French law of 1901) for healthcare professionals, manages all of Prescrire's publications and programmes. Financially independent since 1993, it has published its annual accounts since 1992 in the March issue of Prescrire and in the June issue of Prescrire International.

Each year, Prescrire's directors and the editorial team of over 100, comprising chiefly doctors and pharmacists, sign the "Non merci..." Charter and a declaration of absence of conflicts of interest, in particular with pharmaceutical companies.

This transparency, exceptional in the press in general, and in the specialist press in particular, testifies to our commitment to reliability and credibility, and to putting patients' interests first.

©Prescrire 1 June 2018

"The finances of Association Mieux Prescrire: 2017 Prescrire annual report" Prescrire Int 2018; 27 (194): 164-165. (Pdf, free).

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Download the annual report.
Pdf, free

Wholly self-financed
through subscriptions,
Prescrire makes its accounts
public every year
(June 2018)
Free

A non-profit continuing
education organisation
(June 2018)
Free

"Non merci": Prescrire =
no conflicts of interest
(January 2018)
Free