Roche's vouchers to patients breach regulatory code

doi:10.1136/bmj.b899

Published 3 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b899
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b899

News

Roche’s vouchers to patients breach regulatory code

Roger Dobson

¹ Abergavenny

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The pharmaceutical giant Roche has breached the British drugindustry’s code of conduct with a scheme that providedshopping vouchers to young patients as an incentive to use oneof the company’s products.

The scheme was described as "unacceptable" by the code of conductpanel of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry,which found that Roche breached the code of practice in an adherenceand incentive scheme for its cystic fibrosis drug dornase alfa(marketed as Pulmozyme).

"The panel was very concerned about a pharmaceutical companyin effect providing cash as an incentive to patients to useits medicine," says a report on the ruling, which followed acomplaint from an anonymous Roche employee.

"The panel considered that once enrolled into the programme,and knowing about the £10 [ ${euro}$ 11; $14] vouchers, patientswould be likely to ask their doctor to prescribe Pulmozyme,and thus a breach of the . . . [Full text of this article]