KEY TAKEAWAYS
- RIGHT-COI&F guides transparent reporting of COIs and funding in healthcare guidelines and policy documents of guideline organisations.
- The checklist can also be used to assess the quality and completeness of reporting in published guidelines.
Healthcare guidelines substantially influence clinical practice and policy and are developed through extensive analysis and decision-making. Amid broader issues with accurate disclosure in medical publishing, a recent Annals of Internal Medicine article by Yangqin Xun and colleagues highlighted that while guidelines are especially sensitive to conflicts of interest (COIs) and funder influence, disclosure is generally poor.
Clear and complete reporting of COIs and funding is crucial for credibility and is monitored as a key open science indicator. Yet existing checklists, such as Reporting Items for practice Guidelines in HealThcare (RIGHT), often lack detail on how to report COIs and funding. Xun et al. aimed to address this, building on RIGHT to develop a COI- and funding-specific extension. RIGHT-COI&F can be used both while developing healthcare guidelines and to assess completeness of COI and funding reporting.
RIGHT-COI&F can be used both while developing healthcare guidelines and to assess completeness of COI and funding reporting.
Checklist development
RIGHT-COI&F development followed the recommendations of the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network, based on a published protocol. Key steps were:
- establishing working groups, including an expert panel
- generating an initial checklist based on existing materials and a stakeholder survey
- agreeing checklist items through surveying experts and consensus meetings
- refining and testing the checklist.
RIGHT-COI&F items: policy and implementation
RIGHT-COI&F has 27 items, 18 focused on COIs and 9 on funding. Most items are related to policy and include:
- defining the types of interest to be disclosed (eg, based on relevance, financial amount, or time period) and by whom
- how accuracy and completeness is verified
- processes for determining whether interests are conflicts
- strategies to manage COIs
- whether accepting funding from certain sources is restricted.
Organisational policies may fulfil these items, alleviating the need for detailed descriptions in individual guidelines.
The remaining items relate to implementation in individual projects, such as ensuring that declared interests are reported in detail, alongside the funding received (and the role of funders).
Next steps
To promote adoption, the authors plan to translate RIGHT-COI&F into multiple languages, disseminate it through academic networks, and seek endorsement by medical journals. Further assessment of real-life feasibility and impact is planned. We look forward to seeing how RIGHT-COI&F helps uphold transparency and trust in the healthcare space.
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