Congress and patient advocacy groups have long wanted to know how much money the pharmaceutical industry gives to various health-related institutions. Money, after all, can buy influence.

Now a local drug company says it will disclose all of its educational and charitable grants in the United States on a quarterly basis, starting in February.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC, which has a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, provides grants to hospitals, teaching institutions, managed care organizations, professional associations, patient advocacy groups, and continuing medical education companies.

Chris Viehbacher, president of GlaxoSmithKline’s North American Pharmaceuticals business unit, said by publishing who gets grants “we transparently identify the support we offer” to educational activities.

GlaxoSmithKline’s not the first to do this. Eli Lilly Co. has been disclosing its grants for each quarter since January 2007.

Lilly is actually the poster company for Sen. Charles Grassley, who’s been campaigning for the industry to publish this kind of information a couple of years now.

Who wants to read 41 pages of listings like “Children’s Hospital - Denver, Outreach Pediatric Endocrine Lecture Series, $3,300”?

Well, the Senate Finance Committee, for one. Led by chairman Sen. Max Baucus and Grassley, the committee says the industry often used educational grants as a way to increase the market for their products.

It’s easy to see why the companies do it. They’re in the business of developing new medicines that nearly always cost more than older therapies. So by supporting educational programs that discuss the benefits of those new drugs, the company have a vehicle to encourage doctors to prescribe them.

And these grants aren’t insignificant amounts. The Senate Finance Committee staff surveyed 23 drugs companies and found most spend tens of millions of dollars each year to fund thousands of educational grants and educational programs.

In February, Grassley sent a letter to the CEOs of 15 drug companies asking why they haven’t followed Lilly’s lead. (GlaxoSmithKline wasn’t one of the companies.)

Nearly all of them said they were looking into how best to disclose the information. In May, Pfizer Inc. posted online its first list of grants and charitable contributions made through the first quarter of 2008. Pfizer’s biggest grant was $3.4 million to the California Academy of Family Physicians as part of a three-year anti-smoking campaign.

Locally, AstraZeneca PLC, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co. Inc. and Wyeth are in various stages of their “efforts to promote increased transparency,” as Merck CEO Richard T. Clark put it in his response to Grassley.

GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman Sarah Alspach said the company’s quarterly reports will include the company’s charitable giving as well as grants for continuing medical education.

She said the disclosure will help “dispel some of the confusion over what kinds of things we support.”

Philly Ticker

Shares of Innovative Solutions & Support Inc. fell 32 percent last week, making it the biggest moving local stock. Shares closed Friday at $5.85.

The Exton maker of avionics systems revised downward its revenues for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ends Sept. 30. The company said revenues will be between $10 million and $12 million, rather than the $14 million it projected during a July 31 conference call.

CEO Ray Wilson said in a statement that “issues at a major customer” have caused orders to be lower than expected.

Innovative Solutions wasn’t naming the customer. But Boenning & Scattergood analyst Michael F. Ciarmoli identified it as Eclipse Aviation Corp., which is apparently cutting production of its Eclipse 500 jet for the rest of 2008 and the first half of 2009.

On Aug. 11, the Federal Aviation Administration began a 30-day safety review of the Eclipse 500 jet. In June, one of the jets experienced an “uncontrollable increase” in thrust on a landing in Chicago, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Earnings

Wednesday: Charming Shoppes, eGames

Thursday: Dollar Financial.

Quotable

With both wages and home prices falling, and savings rates close to zero, families are being squeezed in a way that is likely to depress consumption spending in the months ahead.

- Mark Price, economist with the Keystone Research Center from its State of Working Pennsylvania 2008 report.