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Tech in class, pharma in medicine
The shared logic
The logic runs like this: schools need to teach modern subjects like computer science and AI literacy, and many are not equipped, so companies provide tools and teacher training, sponsor curriculums, and write their own. The drug industry's version is that doctors need to know how to prescribe the latest drugs and use the latest medical devices so that healthcare stays up to date.
What medicine found
Medicine studies what big pharma does to medical education and the healthcare industry, and it often warps what doctors prescribe. Doctors prescribe much more of the medicines the industry markets to them and teaches them to use, and the influence shapes how they think about different diseases and what they prioritize.
Questions for schools
The same questions apply in schools: what a big tech curriculum benefits, what it leaves out or glosses over, and whether lessons designed to make kids enthusiastic about tech turn them into docile consumers and docile employees.
How much does drug marketing sway prescribing?
A 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine by Colette DeJong and colleagues linked Medicare prescribing data to payments from drug makers. Doctors who received a single industry-paid meal prescribed the promoted brand-name drug more often than doctors who received none. Prescribing rose with the number of meals received. Nearly all of the meals cost less than 20 dollars.
What rules limit drug industry sway over doctors?
The U.S. Physician Payments Sunshine Act, part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, requires drug and device makers to report payments to doctors and teaching hospitals. The federal government publishes the reports in a public database called Open Payments, which launched in 2014. Separately, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education requires that companies funding a course not control its content. Many medical schools have also adopted policies limiting gifts and sponsored meals.