Under a new conflict-of-interest policy, professors at Harvard Medical School will not take industry money either for speaking for drug and medical device companies or accepting gifts and meal. Moreover, the School is going to separate financing and industry exhibits from Harvard’s postgraduate education classes.
Harvard is one of the first universities who introduced a limit on money that should be paid by each company whose product is studied by a faculty member. The reduced limit is $10,000 while the current is $20,000. According to Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the medical school, these changes will be introduced during the next year. John Brockman, the association president, wrote in his custom essay “We hope to see other medical centers follow this example.”
Harvard did not follow the example of Stanford which imposed a ban on corporate support for individual postgraduate medical education classes. Harvard Medical School will incorporate such financing into its policy only in case it comes from at least two corporations. Harvard restricted the amount of pay to be received by top faculty and officials from serving on corporate boards but still it did not go as far as Partners HealthCare. The pay cap from Partners HealthCare is already applied to Harvard professors who work also at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.