Transparency of medicines data: a critical issue for all involved in MeTA

Posted on 15 December 2009

In London, 7-10 December 2009, 30 stakeholders from all seven MeTA countries met for three days to share their experiences of the MeTA process so far. A key aspect of the meeting was to discuss transparency, data collection and dissemination. The meeting started with a short discussion on what transparency means to them.

Participants responded:

·         ‘Transparency is having nothing to hide. If anyone wants information, you can give it to them.’

·         ‘Whoever wants data can get it easily, without having to jump through hoops.’

·         ‘A question around transparency is how to make people aware firstly that they can access information and secondly where they can get it.’

·         ‘It is the steps you have to take to get the information that matter.’

·         ‘Transparency is not about the documents, or what can be published. It is about people transmitting what they want to say and being able to do this without barriers.'

‘Transparency and accountability go hand in hand. Transparency isn’t enough of an end in itself; it is a means to ensure that consumers are more empowered, and it is a way of ensuring good governance so that the citizens can hold its government to account.’

MeTA stakeholders shared their experiences and key concerns about collecting and disseminating data about medicines.

Some key challenges include:

• Ensuring that the stakeholders fully understand the MeTA process;
• How to support Government to be able to make medicines data available to the public;
• Civil society organisations often lack capacity when it comes to collecting and analysing data;
• Data need to be collected very carefully so that information will not affect anybody negatively;
• Data sets are complex, and data need to be translated so that people can access information through a variety of channels, and
• Human resources to collect data are often insufficient.

Some key lessons learnt about data include:

• Sharing data is important to stimulate discussion and questions;
• Data disclosure meetings raised some useful and important recommendations;
• A first step is for MeTA stakeholders to exchange data among each other;
• Data disclosure meetings uncovered some official websites’ weaknesses that hinder access to published data, and
• There is a need to build trust in the MeTA process.

Read a report of the meeting