Principles of Medical Research

Lilly has established policies, standards and procedures throughout the research and development process to ensure that patient needs remain at the forefront.

Lilly creates and delivers innovative medicines that enable people to live longer, healthier and more active lives. Lilly carefully conducts medical research to generate important information regarding those medicines and promotes them for the indications for which they have been approved.

Lilly complies with the highest ethical principles regarding the proper relationship between medical research and marketing and sales, and does not use its medical research as a means to circumvent laws regarding the promotion of its products.

Conduct of Research

The following Principles are derived from existing company policies and industry codes and define Lilly's standard for conducting, funding and communicating results from its medical research.

  • Lilly does not conduct medical research with the intent that the mere conduct of the study itself might induce the sale of a Lilly product.

  • Lilly may conduct off-label medical research for the purpose of answering important and relevant scientific questions, but does not conduct such research to induce the sale of a Lilly product for off-label use.

  • The Medical component of Lilly is accountable for the design, approval, conduct and scientific disclosure of medical research sponsored by Lilly.

  • For Lilly-sponsored medical research, accountability ultimately resides with the Chief Medical Officer of the company.

  • For medical research conducted by external parties, the Medical component of Lilly is accountable for approval of grant support.

Payments to Healthcare Professionals

The very best clinical practice requires input and expertise from many groups: clinicians; patient organisations; academics; healthcare organisations; and those that discover and manufacture new medicines and medical technology. Collaboration between all of these important experts results in three main benefits:

  1. Making new medicines possible in the first place

  2. Providing vital health education to ensure that medicines are used appropriately

  3. Capturing real life insights into current treatments and understanding unmet medical needs.

It's important that these relationships are managed transparently to help demonstrate that the over-riding objective is to keep patients at the centre of our collective efforts. Lilly discloses all medical research – whether favourable or unfavourable to a Lilly product – in an accurate, objective, and balanced manner for customers to make more informed decisions about its products.

Payments to Healthcare Professionals in Ireland are regulated by the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA).

Since 2016, it is a requirement of the IPHA Code of Practice for payments made to Healthcare Professionals to be published annually on a central website, www.transferofvalue.ie

Lilly does not sponsor Healthcare Professionals or otherwise provide educational funding for the purpose of rewarding or incentivising past, current or future prescribing practices. To view our support policy, please visit our HCP Support page.

EFPIA Disclosure Code

Across Europe, the pharmaceutical industry has committed to disclose the payments that it has made to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and organisations (HCOs) through adoption of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry's HCP/HCO Disclosure Code.

At Lilly, we value our relationship with HCPs and HCOs and fully support the commitment made by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) to publish the details of payments and transfers of value made to them. This information is published on an individual basis (since 2016) and is updated annually.

Please consult EFPIA’s website for additional information on the Disclosure Code.

You may direct any questions specific to Lilly’s implementation of the Disclosure Code to lilly_lilly_complianceadmin@lilly.com

Payments to Patient Organisations

Lilly is committed to working with Europe-based patient organisations for the benefit of patients in a way that is true to the EFPIA Code of Practice and Lilly's integrity in business policy. Lilly takes its commitment to transparency seriously. Since 2009, Lilly has published an annual register of Europe-based patient groups that have received either financial or significant non-financial support from Lilly.

To view details of the financial or significant non-financial support that Lilly has provided to European-based patient organisations, please visit our European Patient Organisation page.

Payments to Healthcare Organisations

Payments to Healthcare Organisations are published via a centralised industry website, www.transferofvalue.ie from June 2016.

For information on Lilly's Grants and Donations application process, please visit our Corporate Responsibility Page.

Eli Lilly and Company's disclosure of its support to patient organisations is one of the activities undertaken by the Company to improve transparency concerning Company dealings with third parties. Most of the data had to be compiled manually across a number of legal entities and countries. Eli Lilly and Company herein declares that the Company has made its best efforts to make a comprehensive disclosure of concerned activities.