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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John McCarthy
Washington University, Department: Internal Medicine/medicine
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Entropy Vision, LLC
Equity Interest - Non-publicly traded entity ( e.g., stock, stock option, or other ownership interest)
Based on WU’s Research COI Policy and the Procedures for Determining and Managing Research Financial Conflicts of Interests, the Conflicts of Interest Committee (CIRC) determined Dr. McCarthy's personal financial relationship with Entropy Vision, related to the above referenced research, creates a financial conflict of interest due to the following reasons:
• The primary focus of Entropy Vision, an entity with which Dr. McCarthy owns equity, is to commercialize intellectual property, a transducer incorporating software developed at WU. The IP is being developed and evaluated in the above listed research.
• The determination for Entropy Vision to license the studied IP in the future will be in large part based on the outcomes of the research.
• Dr. McCarthy's role in designing the study, analyzing data, reporting the results, oversight of the research, supervising individuals involved with the research, and as mentor could directly affect the outcome of the study.
While the CIRC determined a financial conflict of interest exists, it concluded there are mitigating factors that help address the situation:
a. The research is basic in nature and in its early phases.
b. Dr. McCarthy is uniquely qualified by virtue of his expertise and experience, and the research could not be conducted as effectively without his involvement.
c. While there is the possibility for a license in the future based on the results of the study, there is no active license for the IP being studied.
d. Additionally, a plan has been developed to address Dr. McCarthy's financial conflict of interest
REAL TIME ULTRASOUND ENTROPY-BASED QUANTIFICATION OF FIBROFATTY LIVER DISEASE
The major problem addressed in this proposal is the development and evaluation of a noninvasive ultrasonic diagnostic approach for mapping a set of unique and quantitative ultrasonic metrics for liver disease. These are anticipated to differentiate physiological from pathological liver microanatomy in patients with diverse liver diseases with the use of conventional ultrasound scanners and a novel signal processing methodology. The method is based on radiofrequency signal (RF) processing schemes referred to as information theoretic detectors (ITD's) that have been shown to detect pathological changes in muscle diseases and cancer by measuring selected signal entropies that may be translated to the clinic as cheap point-of-care approaches without the need for expensive imaging systems. As prevalence of liver disease increases with age (e.g. non alcoholic fatty liver disease: 9.7% among children, 26% among people 40-59 years old) the availability of a rapid, low- cost, point-of-care device for longitudinal diagnosis of liver pathologies would find widespread clinical application supporting the health and well-being of older adults.
Filed on October 21, 2015.
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John McCarthy filed other conflict of interest disclosures with the NIH:
| Name | Institution | Type | Company | Disclosed Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| John McCarthy | Washington University | Conflict of Interest | Entropy Vision, LLC | $0 - $4,999 |
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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