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 MUSC Conflict of Interest Office, in collaboration with the respective 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 and investigators involved in research activities on MUSC’s behalf must complete a Conflict of Interest Disclosure form annually – with the information disclosed corresponding to the preceding twelve months. Additionally, any employee (including non-exempt/hourly employees) with an economic interest/financial benefit or outside activity related to their MUSC employment is required to submit a Conflict of Interest Disclosure form. MUSC’s annual disclosure cycle is April 1 through 30; however, if an individual employee’s economic interests/financial benefits or outside activities change or develop during the course of the year, they must update their Conflict of Interest Disclosure form within 30 days to reflect the change.

Any MUSC employee who conducts “consulting” (e.g., speaking, expert panels, advisory boards, data safety monitoring board, product review/feedback, etc.) or educational programming/presenting for outside groups or organizations for which they receive payment, an honorarium, reimbursement for travel, etc. must update their conflict of interest disclosure. Prohibited activities include, but are not limited to, speakers bureaus and promotional speaking. Please refer to the MUSC Enterprise COI related policies for additional examples of allowable and prohibited activities.

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 (toll free, available 24 hours, 7 days a week) to report your concern.

If you are an MUSC employee and find that you do not have access to the MUSC Cayuse Outside Interests platform, you can submit a User Access request or contact the MUSC Conflict of Interest office at conflicts@musc.edu.