Payment data disclosed by pharmaceutical companies.
To improve transparency in financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals, the Japanese Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (JPMA), representing over 80 leading pharmaceutical companies, mandates its members to disclose payments for lecturing, consulting, and manuscript drafting made to physicians, including the recipients’ names and affiliations on their websites, as previously explained[4,23,24]. However, according to the JPMA guidance, payment categories, such as meals, travel and accommodations, and other gifts, are disclosed in aggregated amounts and could not be analyzed at individual physician level. Additionally, payments for lecturing, consulting, and drafting are generally paid directly to physicians from pharmaceutical companies and in larger amounts than payments for other categories[13,25-27].