Conflict of Interest

In pursuit of its mission, MUSC encourages clinicians and faculty to build relationships with esteemed colleagues, government institutions, industry partners, and private organizations who work to commercialize innovations that benefit society. As a stand-alone academic medical center, we recognize conflicts of interest arise – and seek to manage such relationships by restricting activities where necessary to preserve transparency and independent decision-making.

Working in tandem, academia and industry can discover and develop new treatments and products to advance health care delivery and patient outcomes. The MUSC community will gain from collaborative partnerships as we continue to embrace innovation in health care. MUSC must continue to manage interactions with industry to ensure we obtain objective results and maintain appropriate ethical practices.

The Conflict of Interest Office, along with faculty conflict of interest committees, reviews conflict of interest disclosures and research activities to provide thoughtful solutions to complex academic, business, and research relationships – active management ensures integrity and objectivity throughout transactions and research conducted at MUSC.

Disclosure Process

Salaried MUSC employees must complete a conflict of interest disclosure annually – with the information disclosed corresponding to the preceding twelve months. MUSC’s yearly disclosure cycle is April 1 through 30. If an individual employee’s business/financial relationships change or develop during the course of the year, they must modify their conflict of interest disclosure within 30 days to reflect the change.

If you are uncertain if you need to disclose a relationship, please contact our staff.

If you are aware of an employee who has a conflict of interest but has not disclosed the relationship, contact a member of our office or call the confidential hotline at 800-296-0269 to report your concern.

Any MUSC employee who gives talks to outside groups or organizations for which they receive payment, an honorarium or reimbursement for travel must update their annual conflict of interest disclosure. Prohibited activities include speakers’ bureaus and promotional speaking.

COI Disclosure

MUSC employees are required to update their disclosure forms annually, or whenever a business or financial relationship changes or develops.