The American Society of Transplantation ensures scientific and institutional objectivity through transparency, monitoring, and disclosure in its relationships with industry.

Goal of Partner Connect:

To facilitate relationships between vendors to the health care industry, such as pharmaceutical and medical instrument companies, and health care professionals for the benefit of transplant patients.

Specifically, vendors to the health care industry value interactions with health care professionals to:

• Ensure that health care professionals have the latest, most accurate information available regarding prescription medicines and medical devices to help advance appropriate patient use;
• Provide scientific and educational information;
• Support medical research and education; and
• Obtain advice and feedback about products through consultation with medical experts.¹

Ethical relationships between vendors to the health care industry and health care professionals support the AST mission of advancing the field of transplantation and improving patient care by promoting research, education, advocacy, organ donation, and service to the community. Developing and making available new medicines, diagnostic tests, medical devices, and other advancements and appropriate marketing of these technologies ensures that patients have access to the products they need and that the products are used correctly for maximum patient benefit.¹

In facilitating the interactions between vendors to the health care industry and health care professionals, the AST is committed to following the highest ethical standards as well as all legal requirements. The AST is not responsible for the content or accuracy of Partner Content. The AST’s intention is that interactions initiated between vendors to the health care industry and health care professionals through AST Partner Connect are professional exchanges designed to benefit transplant patients and enhance the success of available and future treatments.

AST Partner Connect Guidelines:

These Guidelines are to ensure that interactions between vendors to the health care industry and health care professionals through AST Partner Connect are not perceived as inappropriate by patients or the public at large. These Guidelines reflect and build upon the standards and principles set forth in the PhRMA Code on Interactions with Health Care Professionals which was last revised in September 2019.¹

Partner Expectations:

Materials shared through AST Partner Connect should be provided to health care professionals to benefit patients and to enhance the practice of medicine. Partners will focus their interactions on informing health care professionals about products, providing scientific and educational information, and supporting medical education. Partners are solely responsible for the materials shared through AST Partner Connect.

Promotional materials shared to health care professionals through AST Partner Connect by or on behalf of a company should:

1. be accurate and not misleading;
2. make claims about a product only when properly substantiated;
3. reflect the balance between risks and benefits;
4. disclose off-label drug use clearly;
5. omit patient names;
6. avoid bias towards one product or one company’s products; and
7. be consistent with all other Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements governing such communications. ¹

Informational materials should provide health care providers with valuable scientific and clinical information about medicines that may lead to improved patient care.

Partner interactions with health care professionals shall be professional in nature; to ensure the appropriate focus on education and informational exchange and to avoid the appearance of impropriety, partners shall not offer entertainment or recreational benefits of any kind as an incentive for participation in AST Partner Connect.

Partner Connect Participant Expectations:

Health care professionals who participate in AST Partner Connect are asked to share any evidence of deviation from these expectations with AST in writing at info@myast.org.

In addition, health care professionals must remember that marketing and informational materials shared here in AST Partner Connect are only part of the resources that play a role in determining patient treatments. Health care professionals must also rely on their clinical knowledge and experience, clinical practice guidelines, continuing medical education, information from their peers, and other relevant sources of information in making patient treatment decisions.²

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