Because of some recent scandals, the Cleveland Clinic has announced that they are planning to release a report regarding the business relationship between any member of its 1,800 staff of doctors and scientists and drug and device makers. On their website, www.clevelandclinic.org, the Cleveland clinic, which one of the most prominent and prestigious medical research center in the country, will be publishing a full report concerning the financial ties between their doctors and scientists and pharmaceutical and medical product companies.

So far, the Cleveland Clinic is the first institution of its kind to release to the public complete information about the relationships between individual doctors and the medical industry. The move is a pivotal one for the medical world, as doctors, researchers and entire hospitals and research centers are under close scrutiny when it comes to the potential financial implications and conflicts that may emerge when medical staff and companies work very closely in the great effort to develop new medications and devices.

The problems centered on doctors and their financial relationships with companies arose a few years ago, when the media published articles about possible conflicts of interest regarding doctors from the Cleveland Clinic and their financial links with the medical industry. It is a common practice in the American medical world for doctors to keep their ties with the medical industry out of the spotlight, yet this practice may soon become a thing of the past as it is now a common belief that hiding such relationships has a negative effect on the integrity of both medical research and patient care.