The ICIUM 2011 Medicines Policy, Regulation, and Governance track welcomes abstracts addressing the following topics: processes for changing medicines policies; medicines selection and guidelines in national systems; good governance, transparency and issues around conflicts of interest at the health care and financing institutions level; how to improve the use of medicines by health care providers; and the role of consumers, patients and community systems in policy making and policy and program implementation. In particular, we seek to discuss work on:

1 - The POLICY PROCESS

• Information driving policy: what is the landscape of health systems that have prompted health reforms?
  
• Process for change: are reforms best achieved through a top down approach or a consensus building approach?
  
• Key players for reforms: traditionally, government drives reforms, but what are potential contributions (or barriers) coming from the private sector (health professional organizations, academia, trade sector, donor or multilateral organizations) and politicians?
  
• Documenting reforms: successes and failures are both important substrates for policy improvement. How to learn from "silent service" efforts, which may lead to under-recognized positive outcomes?
  
• Examples of regulatory capture: how to prevent these from happening?

2 - NATIONAL SYSTEMS, PROGRAMS AND POLICIES

• Medicines selection and guidelines, with a particular focus on process and outcomes: for example comparative studies of national lists over time, or between countries and the WHO Model List, or description of the effects of changing from experience-based selection to evidence-based selection.
  
• Formulary systems can make or break health systems. What are lessons from countries on the process of selecting essential medicines?
  
• Can a national formulary improve universal access to health products and rational use?
  
• How can a national formulary prevent corruption in terms of procurements of medicines? What about centralized procurement?
  
• How important is health technology assessment of pharmaceuticals towards making a formulary work?
  
• How important is it that pharmacovigilance systems are integrated into the formulary?
  
• Do national health insurance schemes play a role in the selection process (reimbursement and coverage for formulary medicines) and do they influence utilization?

3 - HEALTH CARE AND FINANCING INSTITUTIONS

• Methods of curbing corruption, promoting good governance, transparency and accountability in the pharmaceutical sector, and its impact on health systems strengthening;
  
• Declaring, identifying and managing conflict of interest in the pharmaceutical sector;
• Assessing transparency and good governance in pharmaceutical systems;
  
• Actions following COI: how is conflict of interest handled?

4 - HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

• Ethical relationships between industry and clinicians: is self regulation the key to success or does it need a government (drug regulator) intervention?
  
• How should drug regulatory agencies approach health workers complaints of poor quality medicines (therapeutic failures) that are observed in clinical practice?
  
• Depending on national regulations – how should conflict between dispensing doctors and prescribing pharmacists be managed? How do these practices vary?
  

This area covers consumers, patients and community systems: 

• What is their role in policy making and on policy and program implementation? How to assess their role?
  
• Part of drug promotion is targeted to patients (disease awareness, disease mongering). How can this be evaluated?
  
• What are the experiences from the United States and New Zealand on direct-to-consumer-advertising?
  
• Conflict resolution - what to do when religion intervenes with state health policies?