Collaboration between pharmaceutical companies and patient advocates often requires both parties to sign contracts that define the terms and conditions of the collaboration, covering such matters as confidentiality, intellectual property, copyright, data protection, compensation and other responsibilities of both parties. The complexity of these agreements has often been challenging for patient advocates to work with due to the contracts being long, difficult to understand and sometimes containing ambiguous clauses.
Myeloma Patients Europe (MPE) and the Workgroup of European Cancer Patient Advocacy Networks (WECAN), along with Patient Focused Medicine Development (PFMD) initiated the project “Reasonable Agreements between Patient Advocates and Pharmaceutical Companies”. The patient-led multi-stakeholder project collectively representing 35 patient organisations, 16 pharmaceutical companies and 7 other project partners.
The project aims to streamline the legal framework between the patient community and the pharmaceutical industry, providing guidance for the content of legal contracts while maintaining reasonable safeguards for both contractual parties. The joint initiative has collectively contributed to and previously released the Guiding Principles on Reasonable Agreements between Patient Advocates and Pharmaceutical Companies and the development of four Reference Agreements for different types of engagements (Advisory Boards, Collaborations, Speaking Engagements and Consultancy) that are in alignment with the Guiding Principles.
To learn more about this project, please click here.
