Stimulating Creativity and Innovation Through Apt Educational Policy

The gap between expected and actual skillsets to drive workforce creativity and developing innovative products and services in recent times suggests the need for a thorough review of educational policy. The required level of creativity and innovation could be stimulated through educational policy review and effective implementation of action plans to meet expectations in the fourth industrial revolution. A literature review approach was adopted to examine the issues in current education system, as well as the emerging trends within the system to promote creative learning. The findings show that discipline-specific instructional strategies propelled by technological innovations (educational virtual reality games) are essential in stimulating creativity and innovation. Gamification in learning pedagogies not only promotes important academic learning but also builds the skills required for success in the 21st century.

Accessibility and quality of drug company disclosures of payments to healthcare professionals and organisations in 37 countries: a European policy review

ObjectivesTo examine the accessibility and quality of drug company payment data in Europe.DesignComparative policy review of payment data in countries with different regulatory approaches to disclosure.Setting37 European countries.ParticipantsEuropean Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, its trade group and their drug company members; eurosfordocs.eu, an independent database integrating payments disclosed by companies and trade groups; regulatory bodies overseeing payment disclosure.Main outcome measuresRegulatory approaches to disclosure (self-regulation, public regulation, combination of the two); data accessibility (format, structure, searchability, customisable summary statistics, downloadability) and quality (spectrum of disclosed characteristics, payment aggregation, inclusion of taxes, recipient or donor identifiers).ResultsOf 30 countries with self-regulation, five had centralised databases, with Disclosure UK displaying the highest accessibility and quality. In 23 of the remaining countries with self-regulation and available data, disclosures were published in the portable document format (PDF) on individual company websites, preventing the public from understanding payment patterns. Eurosfordocs.eu had greater accessibility than any industry-run database, but the match between the value of payments integrated in eurosfordocs.eu and summarised separately by industry in seven countries ranged between 56% and 100% depending on country. Eurosfordocs.eu shared quality shortcomings with the underlying industry data, including ambiguities in identifying payments and their recipients. Public regulation was found in 15 countries, used either alone (3), in combination (4) or in parallel with (8) self-regulation. Of these countries, 13 established centralised databases with widely ranging accessibility and quality, and sharing some shortcomings with the industry-run databases. The French database, Transparence Santé, had the highest accessibility and quality, exceeding that of Disclosure UK.ConclusionsThe accessibility and quality of payment data disclosed in European countries are typically low, hindering investigation of financial conflicts of interest. Some improvements are straightforward but reaching the standards characterising the widely researched US Open Payments database requires major regulatory change.