Association of Scholarly Impact to Industrial Contributions Among Academic Interventional Radiologists

• Published in: Journal of the American College of Radiology
• Main Authors: Islam, Mahee, Lee, Jasmine, Huy, Bunchhin, Shanmugasundaram, Srinidhi, Kumar, Abhishek, Shukla, Pratik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 26.06.2024
• Subjects: H-index; industry funding; industry relationships; scholarly impact; H-index; industry relationships; industry funding; scholarly impact
• ISSN: 1546-1440; 1558-349X; 1558-349X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jacr.2024.06.012

The Physician Sunshine Act of 2010 aimed to increase public awareness of physician-industry relationships. Our objective was to evaluate whether there is an association between scholarly impact and industry funding among academic interventional radiologists. A database from a prior study with our group was used in which we had investigated H-indices among US interventional radiologists; academic rank, gender, institution, and geographic location were obtained. The Scopus database was queried to determine all physicians’ H-index. The CMS Open Payments database was used to determine industry payments from 2015 to 2021 for each interventional radiologist. H-index and professor rank positively and significantly correlated with industrial funding (H-index coefficient = $6,977, P < .001 and professor rank coefficient = $183,902, P = .003). Industry funding was found to be significantly different between all ranks. Among 830 academic interventional radiologists, the mean industrial funding of male physicians was $130,034, which was significantly higher than female physicians’ $28,166 (P = .00013). By academic rank, male primary investigators of associate professor and unranked position had higher industrial funding than female primary investigators (Wilcoxon test, P = .029 and P= .039, respectively). Professor and assistant professor ranks had no significant difference in industrial funding between male and female physicians (Wilcoxon’s test, P = .080 and P = .053, respectively). Scholarly activity as defined by the H-index and academic rank seem to have a positive association with industry funding of academic interventional radiologists.