The complexities of individual financial conflicts of interest

Abstract

Academic health centers (AHCs) are unique resources that are critical for the advancement of science and the training of health care providers, scientists, and educators, AHCs depend on public trust. Certain financial relationships between medical school faculty and industry create situations that have the potential to be deleterious to AHCs. Yet, the translation of clinically relevant, scientific advances to products that directly impact patients' lives benefits from entrepreneurial activities, and such activities necessitate interactions between academia and industry. Society has a vested interest in protecting human research participants, maintaining objectivity in scientific research, and encouraging creative research with clinical applications. Conflicts of interest (COI) committees have been created by AHCs to evaluate faculty financial COI and to develop strategies to eliminate, reduce, or manage such conflicts. Issues involving financial COI are relevant to psychiatry. These issues are reviewed from the perspective of regulatory oversight provided by a medical school's COI committee.