At Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, we believe that sponsoring and supporting Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for HCPs is part of our responsibility for the medicines we develop.

By increasing knowledge about diseases and the latest standards of care and treatments, we can help to enhance medical practice as well as improve patient outcomes.

Through our CPD programmes we aim to contribute to high quality education in true partnership with the medical community, to ensure that important new medical advances are discussed in a variety of settings from international congresses to smaller educational meetings.

We provide financial support in the form of grants and sponsorships to the major national and European congresses. This is because congresses provide HCPs with critical information on medical advances, essential for improving patient care.

The educational meetings we support must foster scientific exchange and disseminate latest standards of care to help facilitate safe and effective treatment for patients. Some of these meetings are qualified by accreditation bodies, and some are not. At Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, we apply the same quality rules to both.

At a local level, we follow the UK regulations in regards to events accreditation and health authority endorsement.

We support medical educational events and activities which are organised with independent experts according to Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine principles. The policy we follow is based on the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) Code of Practice on the promotion of prescription-only medicines and interactions with HCPs. Further information on the Code is available from the ABPI.

We provide support for individual HCPs to attend congresses and meetings. HCPs have a responsibility to keep up to date with medical advances through continued education, along with other pharmaceutical companies; J&J is taking part of the responsibility here. The selection process we use is transparent and based on HCPs educational needs or active involvement in a meeting or event.

We are confident that the way we support CPD programmes meets society’s expectations in terms of transparency, whilst fostering scientific exchange and knowledge dissemination to ensure the best treatment outcomes for patients.