Dollars for Profs
Dig Into University Researchers' Outside Income and Conflicts of Interest
Published Dec. 6, 2019
This database was last updated in December 2019 and should only be used as a historical snapshot. There may be new or amended records not reflected here.
Conflict of Interest
Institutions must file significant disclosures to the National Institutes of Health if they determine financial relationships could affect the design, conduct or reporting of the NIH-funded research. The NIH provided us with their entire financial conflict of interest database, with filings from 2012 through 2019.
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Richard Lester
University of British Columbia, Department: Na
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WelTel Incorporated
Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)
This PHS funded study explores the use of a not for profit open source mHealth software platform and services, which I developed, to improve healthcare outcomes in East Africa. The software and services for this study are being provided by WelTel International mHealth Society (WelTel NFP), of which I am the co-Founder (with my wife), as well as the Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer. The mHealth technology allows health care providers to improve outpatient support, medication adherence, retention in care and quality of care by sending notifications to outpatients on their cell phones. These combined improvements can reduce health system costs by minimizing more costly inpatient and crisis care. Neither I nor my wife have received or intend to receive, any compensation from WelTel for services rendered on this PHS funded study.
My wife and I have now co-founded a company (WelTel Inc.) with the purpose of developing and providing software and related technologies to support mobile health (mHealth) SMS based patient engagement projects and services in Canada, the USA, and other countries outside of Africa on a for profit basis. WelTel NFP will have partial ownership of WelTel Inc. This is part of a sustainability strategy for scaling up the ‘WelTel’ services globally while allowing the non-profit to access exceptional technology in lower income settings. WelTel Inc. will not sell its services in Kenya, however, WelTel non-profit will license them through free access agreements between WelTel non-profit and WelTel Inc. for work in the African region, for the duration of these projects
WelTel Retain: Promoting Engagement in Pre-ART HIV Care Through SMS
Engaging HIV-infected individuals in care is critical to the long-term success of programs funded by the President's Emergency Relief Plan for HIV/AIDS (PEPFAR). By retaining patients in care before they start treatment, the WelTel cell phone text messaging intervention could improve the health outcomes of people infected with HIV/AIDS and even reduce the risk of HIV transmission. Establishing the cost-effectiveness of WelTel could ultimately lead to health system efficiencies that save millions of dollars.
Filed on August 19, 2014.
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Notes: When a more specific filing date is not available for an individual financial disclosure or conflict of interest form, we use the year the form was filed. If the year was not disclosed, we report the range of years covered by our public records requests. In a few cases, a start date was provided instead of a filing date. In those cases, we use the start date instead.
Fewer than 10% of records from the University of Florida and fewer than 1% of records from the University of Texas system were removed because they did not contain enough information.
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