Big Pharma paid UK healthcare orgs £400 million during 2020-2022

Written by Rhoda Wilson on May 21, 2024. Posted in Current News

Every year, members of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (“ABPI”) are required to disclose money that has been paid to healthcare organisations

The data is collated and published on Disclosure UK’s website.

Disclosures reveal that pharmaceutical companies have paid UK healthcare organisations £404 million over the three years 2020-2022.

£150 million, or 37 percent, was made by five pharmaceutical companies: GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Aventis, Novartis, Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

There is little detail about what these payments relate to except that they do not relate to research and development activities.

In a previous article, we revealed AstraZeneca paid TV doctors to promote vaccines and downplay vaccine injuries – dubbed ITVGate. Possibly in a similar vein, GlaxoSmithKline has paid journalists for “disease awareness”.

Using the same basis as we used in our previous article for healthcare professionals (“HCPs”), we have aggregated the data in the Disclosure UK database for the years 2020 to 2022 for the Transfer of Values (“ToVs”) from pharmaceutical companies to healthcare organisations (“HCOs”).

ToVs include financial payments and payments in kind.

According to the ABPI Code of Practice:

“Healthcare organisation” means either a healthcare, medical or scientific association or organisation such as a hospital, clinic, foundation, university or other teaching institution or learned society whose business address, place of incorporation or primary place of operation is in Europe or an organisation through which one or more health professionals or other relevant decision makers provide services. ABPI Code of Practice, Clause 1.8

Although methods of disclosure may vary with some pharmaceutical companies, the vast majority follow ABPI’s definition of HCO, according to ABPI’s guidance notes for 2022 Disclosure UK data.

In the UK, processing of a person’s personal data may be afforded protection from the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and so the full extent of payments to HCPs may not be published.

However, information about HCOs is not considered personal data therefore a lawful basis is not required to publish organisation names and addresses on Disclosure UK. “We expect 100 percent of the values made to HCOs to be published individually on Disclosure UK,” ABPI states in a pamphlet.

In total, pharmaceutical companies have paid £403.7 million to healthcare organisations over the three years 2020 to 2022, with nearly £338.5 million coming from just 20 pharmaceutical companies.

Below we have attached a pdf of the full list sorted from the largest to the smallest values, followed by a list of the 20 companies that made the largest payouts.

As we noted in our previous article, the company that made the largest payments to HCPs during 2020-2022 was AstraZeneca followed by GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”).  Although AstraZeneca does not top the list for HCOs, it comes in at fifth place.

Topping the list for HCOs is GSK.

Please note: The title has an error. It should read “for the years 2020-2022.”

Please note: The title has an error. It should read “for the years 2020-2022”.

Of the $12.5 million GSK paid to HCOs in 2022, £9.6 million (77 percent) went to 20 institutions with King’s College London being by far the largest beneficiary.  In the image below of the top 20 beneficiaries, note the payments to Public Health England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (“NICE”).

Public Health England has been replaced by the UK Health Security Agency (“UKHSA”) and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. NICE issued the guideline NG163 that was used to kill the elderly during the so-called covid pandemic of 2020.

GSK Payments to King’s College London

If a search is conducted for “King’s College London” on the Disclosure UK website, there are several healthcare organisations or “institution names” that are returned.  This is because King’s has several locations and therefore addresses.

The £2.4 million from GSK, for example, was paid to an address on the Strand, London. In total, from all pharmaceutical companies across all King’s locations, the institution received £2.96 million in 2022.

The bulk of the payments from pharmaceutical companies, and all of the payments from GSK, are related to “contracted services.”  There are no details of what King’s was contracted to do for GSK.

In September 2021, GSK and the Comprehensive Cancer Centre at King’s College London formed a five-year partnership to provide insight into how and why some patients respond to certain cancer treatments and what might be driving the progression of the disease in others.

The collaboration, known as the Translational Oncology Research Hub, brings together 10 AI experts from GSK and 10 oncology specialists from King’s College London to work together in their labs.

In May 2022, 8 months after GSK formed a partnership with King’s, Professor Tony Ng – who heads the Comprehensive Cancer Centre and is joint head of King’s College School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences – joined GSK on a part-time basis, to help establish the Translational Oncology Research Hub.

The Hub aims to investigate genetics’ role in developing personalised cancer treatments.  AI systems will be used to build tools that will support clinical decision-making to help improve patient outcomes.  The partnership seems to be research and development activities, which is decisive as far as disclosure of ToVs is concerned in that it does not form part of the £2.4 million disclosed as paid to HCOs.

Payments to HCOs as disclosed in the Disclosure UK database do not relate to research and development.  According to ABPI, ToVs relating to research and development activities are disclosed under the category “aggregate data.”

In this category, individual recipients are not named.  Some aggregate amounts disclose whether the payment was made to a HCP or a HCO but the bulk of the payments do not even disclose this amount of information.

In 2022, under the “aggregate” category, GSK paid unnamed HCPs, HCOs and other relevant decision-makers £29.5 million for research and development activities, which is significantly higher (more than £10 million) than the previous two years, suggesting the GSK/King’s partnership expenses are being disclosed under the “aggregate” category.

However, as seen in the last row of the table below, the payments to King’s College London have also dramatically increased in 2022 suggesting GSK and King’s College London’s collaboration is more than just research and development.

GSK Payments to UK Patients, Journalists and Members of Public

Starting with 2022 data, ABPI requires pharmaceutical companies to publish aggregate information, without naming individuals, about relationships with certain members of the public on their own websites.

GSK has published this data HERE.

In 2022, for certain contracted services GSK paid:

• £488,000 to 199 members of the public for advertising boards, clinical imaging support, literature review, statistical consultancy, and technological consultancy and policy;
• £19,000 to 59 patients for speaker engagement, patient stories, patient advisory board; and,
• £33,000 to three journalists for ‘disease awareness’

It would be interesting to know the names of the journalists and which diseases they were ‘raising awareness’ for but, unfortunately, this information is not required by ABPI and so is not provided.

See more here expose-news.com

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