Information About New AdvaMed Guidelines for Interactions With Health Care Professionals

February 2004 - As of January 1st, 2004, AdvaMed has officially enacted a voluntary set of codes for ethical interactions with Health Care professionals.  These codes, based off the PHARMA codes governing Pharmaceutical company interactions with health professionals, have been in development for nearly two years.  Drafted by the AdvaMed board in conjunction with the Dept. of Health and Human Services Inspector General, the codes are designed to promote ethical and legal interactions in the medical devices industry.

A wide variety of resources can be found to help explain in depth the contents of the code and industry reaction to the changes. The full text of the code and relevant AdvaMed press releases can be found at http://www.advamed.org/publicdocs/coe.html. The following are some other informational items of interest:

• AMA Pamphlet: An informational pamphlet put out by the American Medical Assoc. discussing the new guidelines. 
• PHARMAC Code: The original PHARMAC code, created by the Office of the Inspector General, upon which the AdvaMed guidelines were derived.
• AMA Ethical Gift Guidelines: A free online educational module to help teach physicians about ethical interactions with the medical device industry. 
• MedicalDeviceLink Article: A short article from Medical Devicelink written by one of members of the AdvaMed board that drafted the code.  Includes a look at how the code was created, and a short history of why the code was created. 
• MDSI Article: A short article commenting on the new codes and their purpose for being put in place.

Publication Date: 25-Feb-2004
Last Modified: 11-Jan-2005