Belgium
The main reason for the update of the Mdeon Code of Ethics is to align it with the Sunshine Act. Simultaneously, the Practical Guidelines of the code have been adapted as well.
The two major changes are:
- Adaptation of the chapter on the transparency obligation according to the Sunshine Act (Chapter 1 of Title 3 of the Law of 18 December 2016 on various health provisions).
- Adaptation of the Practical Guidelines related to Article 3 of the Code of Ethics according to the caselaw applied by the Visa Office for 10 years, in particular the fact that the sponsorship of scientific training courses should always aim at continued medical education of the healthcare professionals. This means that it should therefore always be possible to combine the training course with the exercise of their profession without interrupting it for a long time. Long-term scientific training courses (i.e. more than three weeks) can therefore not be sponsored by the industry (e.g. fellowship of several months, additional year of study) since these are no scientific events within the meaning of article 10 §2 of the Law concerning medicines.
The 2018 version of the Code of Ethics and Practical Guidelines can be found on the Mdeon website.