Like Beauty and Art, Transparency is in the Eye of the Beholder

By D. Jeffrey Campbell and Brian P. Sharkey

For the past several years, Porzio Life Sciences, LLC (PorzioLS) has published an annual White Paper analyzing the evolution of the global transparency movement. 

In today's world we are awash in Big Data. The global transparency movement is no different than many other aspects of life in the 21st century, as statistics and data are used to support competing points of view about the financial relationships between the life sciences industry, healthcare professionals ("HCPs"), and healthcare organizations ("HCOs"). 

In this paper, we will  attempt to "bring data," but we will not do so with such a myopic focus that we miss the larger context. Rather, we will engage more deeply to try to ascertain what the data says about the global transparency movement, an endeavor that calls for both forensics and guess work. Our ultimate goal is to present a fair, balanced view of the success of transparency initiatives and to evaluate where the movement may be headed next.

To do so, we will focus primarily on the transparency experience of four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Although we will touch upon additional countries and other transparency developments, we chose those four countries because they represent a mix of legislative-based, industry code-based, and to-be-established reporting requirements and encompass all of the key issues involved in the global transparency movement. 

To read the full white paper, please click here.