In order to provide the best possible care to their patients, doctors rely on pharmaceutical companies to provide accurate and balanced information about their medicines and vaccines.
Merck believes the best way to provide this information is for pharmaceutical companies to maintain informative, ethical and professional relationships with healthcare providers. Our interactions with providers, other customers and consumers are governed by laws and regulations, and for our long-standing global code of ethical conduct and guidance, Our Values and Standards. We enforce these through our global business practices and compliance program.
We recognize that both our reputation for integrity and the trust that our stakeholders place in us are dependent on our ethical practices. For this reason, we want to make certain that the ways in which we market and sell our products to our customers—healthcare professionals, health insurers and governments—provide with accurate, balanced and useful information so that prescribers can make the best decisions for their patients. By adhering to the highest ethical sales and marketing standards, we can be sure that scientific information is the predominant factor in prescribing decisions, which helps to reinforce our reputation for providing high-quality products and for contributing to improvements in public health.
Our professional sales representatives and other employees inform our customers about our medicines and vaccines and their appropriate use. In some countries, where permitted by law, we also directly inform patients and other consumers about diseases and available treatments that they may wish to discuss with their doctors.
We believe that our marketing, sales and advertising activities make an important contribution to medicine by informing our customers about treatment options that are based on the most current scientific information and findings from rigorous clinical studies. We take our marketing, sales and advertising responsibilities seriously and evaluate these activities regularly to ensure they are consistent with laws and regulations and with company policies and values. Learn more.
Performance
In 2011, Merck received no warning letters or untitled letters from the U.S. FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) or from the Advertising and Promotional Labeling Branch (APLB) of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Commitments
- Merck discloses payments to U.S.-based healthcare professionals who speak on behalf of the company or who provide consultation to Merck on the development of our products and strategies
- Merck adheres to established country-specific regulations and industry codes that require disclosure of payments to healthcare professionals (Japan, U.K., France) and patient associations (Europe)
- Merck will promptly investigate all good-faith reports of conduct believed to be unethical or in violation of the company’s policies, values or standards, to maintain a process that ensures appropriate escalation of such concerns and to take appropriate remedial action in response to such concerns
