Policy on relations with other stakeholders
The scale of the challenge and the severity of the need mean disengagement is not an option.
ECNP is aware that different stakeholders have different interests, and these have to be carefully reconciled. We are not alone in facing these challenges. Medical science has evolved a system of principles and protocols to facilitate interaction and to regulate potential conflicts of interest. While it can never be full-proof, this system has nevertheless underwritten collaborations that have delivered decades of medical advances and therapeutic progress.
In addition, ECNP has developed its own mechanisms to ensure transparency and to minimise the scope for conflicts of interests. Given its origins in pharmacology, the College has approached cross-sector collaborations with particular vigilance and caution and ECNP’s rules regulating these relations are unmatched in the field for their rigour, breadth and the stringency with which they are applied.
The ECNP Congress
Congresses offer unusually valuable opportunities for physicians to interact with the companies that develop the treatments they use in their clinical practice. It is ECNP’s belief that the information that these companies are able to provide about their treatments, the science that underlies them, and how they should be most safely and effectively used makes a critical contribution to the congress’s educational mission. ECNP has therefore developed a series of measures to ensure that the content presented by companies at their exhibition stands and in their sessions remains objective and scientifically robust:
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ECNP does not accept general sponsorship or commercially oriented support.
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Industry’s participation in the ECNP Congress is limited to sessions and exhibitions stands, which are unambiguously denominated as such.
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The industry programme is clearly delineated and as far as possible is separate and distinct from the scientific programme.
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ECNP does not advertise industry activities in its communications, on its website or in any of its Congress materials.
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Industry sessions are reviewed by the ECNP Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) for rigour, balance, and objectivity. The SPC reserves the right to demand changes to the session composition or to reject the session outright.
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The SPC is an independent committee within ECNP, separated from Congress’s financial administration.
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The objectivity of industry sessions is further assured by the European Accreditation Committee in CNS (EACIC), which specialises in continuing medical education (CME) accreditation for European brain-related meetings and events.
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ECNP requires speakers, chairs and poster presenters to declare potential conflicts of interest in their presentations.
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ECNP leadership does not participate in industry sessions, either as speakers or moderators.
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The separation of the ECNP Congress programme and its formation from untoward influence is closely monitored by the ECNP Executive Committee and the External Review Board of ECNP.
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The ECNP Congress is annually assessed for e4ethics compliance with the EFPIA Code.
For more on our Congress rules regarding industry, please see the ECNP Industry Guidelines.
Other activities
As well as the Congress, ECNP organises other activities, which are designed to stimulate treatment research and development more broadly and in which companies, as important stakeholders, are invited to participate. The New Frontiers Meeting and the Roadmap Meeting on Precision Psychiatry are two such activities. Because their focus is scientific rather than educational, and the support companies provide is connected to their research rather than promotional agendas, it is at a different level of jeopardy. Nevertheless, ECNP has developed rules for these activities in order to minimise the scope for undue influence and conflicts of interest.
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Collaboration is restricted to pre-competitive phases of research, minimising the relevance of extra-scientific motivations.
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To avoid one supporter being unduly preponderant, ECNP only collaborates with a minimum of three companies on any one activity.
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Company involvement in transparently declared in all materials relating to the activity.
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By being evaluated and confirmed to fulfil the eligibility criteria for working with European Medicines Agency (EMA), ECNP conforms to the EMA’s independence and transparency criteria.
Policy on ECNP office-holders and committee members
Members of all ECNP committees, beginning with the Executive Committee, are expected to act independently and in the greater interest of ECNP. Affiliations that may influence an individual’s judgements or actions are monitored, especially where these have the potential to result in personal gain.
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Committee members receive no payment for their work with ECNP.
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Committee members must declare their primary employment(s).
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Members of the core Executive Committee are barred from working for a commercial enterprise.
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Where a relationship exists to a peer association, charity, law firm, government agency, investment company or any other body with interests in the field of neuropsychopharmacology, these should also be declared.
ECNP is also a signatory of the BioMed Alliance’s Code of Conduct.