Subtopic 2: Advisory Boards
Advisory Boards are internal meetings that may be organized by AstraZeneca to gain insight, feedback and recommendations from external advisors to answer specific questions in response to a genuine business need. As with other meetings all aspects should be examined, but with advisory boards you will need to ensure that the meeting may not be deemed as promotional in any way. Hospitality should follow the same principles as for all other meetings i.e. should not be lavish or excessive, and should be secondary to the meeting itself (see meetings and hospitality module).
Some key points about advisory boards to help ensure that they are not deemed promotional are:
- There must be a clear and documented business need for the advice
- The number of advisors invited and attending and the duration of the advisory board must not exceed what is reasonably necessary to achieve the objectives of the advisory board
- They must not be attended by sales representatives or their first line managers
- There must be a clear and documented rationale for the choice of advisors and this should stand up to scrutiny
- The agenda must allow enough time for active discussion and input from all of the advisors. Their input must constitute the majority of the agenda and must be captured in a way that allows it to be readily referenced and acted upon by AZ
- Information provided to the advisors must not exceed what is reasonably necessary to achieve the objectives of the advisory board and must be presented in a non promotional way
- Appropriate contracts and agreements must be in place with advisors
Consider this example
In the UK a clinician complained about a series of advisory boards that he had been invited to by Astellas Pharma. When he attended one meeting he felt that the meeting was promoting the product Mycamine (micafungin) – there were too many presentations. After the meeting he was visited by an Astellas representative who had a document with his name on it. When he insisted on seeing the document he discovered that it contained details of the advisory board attendees, including what they thought about Mycamine and whether their opinions on Mycamine had been changed by the meeting.
On investigation the Authority found that this had been one of three pairs of regional meetings, with 12 advisors planned to attend from each region. Astellas said their purpose was to seek guidance and support in the future development and marketing of Mycamine. The company wanted to understand local issues and work on better management solutions.
The meetings started at 08:45 and ended at 16:30. Each had approximately 5 hours of presentations with 30 minutes allocated for discussion and feedback. The rest of the time was for refreshments.
Advisors were selected for invitation on the basis of recommendations from sales personnel. In their instructions it said that nominees had to have a belief in Mycamine, a sphere of influence including drugs and therapeutics, previous experience in getting drugs onto a formulary and a desire to work with Astellas and become a brand advocate.
Which of the following statement do you agree with:
- The agenda for the advisory boards is a cause for concern you need to consider whether the balance between time spent on one-way presentations and time for gathering feedback and advice is acceptable. In AstraZeneca’s view input from advisors should form the majority of the agenda.
- Sales personnel cannot recommend advisory board attendees sales personnel may have valuable insight into the details of their customers’ research interests for example. But they should not be recommending advisors on the basis of their prescribing habits or advocacy of a particular product. It should be on whether they have the required expertise to make a meaningful contribution to the advisory board.
- The document about the opinions of the advisory board members suggests the intention of the meeting was promotional The Panel considered that this was the development of brand advocates under the guise of an advisory board.
- The purpose of the meeting as stated by Astellas is not acceptable the Panel felt that the objectives were not necessarily unacceptable.
Ruling
The Panel considered that the overall arrangements, particularly the development of brand advocates under the guise of an advisory board, brought discredit upon and reduced confidence in the pharmaceutical industry and in that regard ruled a breach of the UK Code.
