Vol. 12, Issue No. 7: 9 SEPTEMBER 2013 – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
Welcome to Volume 12, Issue No. 7 (9 September 2013) of Pharma Marketing News. See the featured article summaries below.
John Mack, Publisher & Editor
editor@news.pharma-mkting.com
@pharmaguy Physicians Under Pharma’s Influence Are Physicians Powerless Pawns of Pharma Psychology?
“Physicians fail to recognize their vulnerability to commercial influences due to self-serving bias, rationalization, and cognitive dissonance,” claim Sunita Sah and Adriane Fugh-Berman, authors of “Physicians Under the Influence: Social Psychology and Industry Marketing Strategies,” part of a symposium on institutional corruption and pharmaceutical policy in the September 2013 issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Moreover, the authors claim that “professionalism offers little protection; even the most conscious and genuine commitment to ethical behavior cannot eliminate unintentional, subconscious bias.”
The authors/ethicists identify six “principles of influence” that are “key to the industry’s routine marketing strategies, which rely on the illusion that the industry is a generous avuncular partner to physicians.”
Topics include:
- Six Principles of Influence
- Gifts and Reciprocity
- Are Gifts Integral to Promotion?
- Commitment and Consistency
- Social Proof and Sense of Entitlement
- Big Pharma Payments Pay Off
- Twelve-Step Program to Defeat Pharma Marketing Dependence
- Figure: Healthcare Professional Earnings Trends
- Payments to Physicians and Prescribing Behavior
- What Do Pharma Marketers Think About Gifts to Physicians?
- Authority and Scarcity
Download the full text PDF file here:
http://ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com/pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews1207-article01.pdf Mobile Apps Track Sunshine Payments Will They Help Reduce Disputes?
Under the Physician Payments Sunshine Law, pharmaceutical companies are required — starting in August 2013 — to collect financial data regarding payments to physicians. These data must be submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) by March 2014. In the fall of 2014, CMS will post the 2013 data on its OpenPayments website, which will be accessible to the public.
Given that some pharma companies may not be trustworthy, physicians may want to keep a record of all the payments — cash or cash equivalent, in-kind items or services, stock, dividend, etc. — they receive from pharma companies. It turns out that CMS has a free smartphone app for that! CMS also created a companion app for the drug industry.
This article is a review of CMS’s OpenPayments App for Physicians and Industry.
Topics include:
- QR-Codes Allow Easy Data Sharing
- Will The Apps Reduce Disputes?
- How Secure Is It?
Download the full text PDF file here:
http://ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com/pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews1207-article02.pdf Pharma and Social Media – Comfy Bedfellows Boehringer, AstraZeneca, & Janssen Get It On!
Have you noticed that pharmaceutical companies are routinely using social media for communicating and engaging with consumers, patients, physicians, and news media?
Pharma is getting very comfy with Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, and even Tumblr to reach its many and diverse audiences.
This article reviews social media breakthroughs by Boehringer, AstraZeneca, & Janssen.
Topics include:
- Bedfellows, Not Badfellas!
- TweetChats Galore!
- Rx Branded YouTube Channels
- BI Joins the “Over 50K Likes Club”
- Handling Comments on Facebook
- #COPDChat
- Is Your TweetChat “Regulation Safe?”
- AZ Posts DTC Ads on Blog: Ad vs. Editorial?
- AZPurpleZone
- Janssen Takes a Tumblr
Download the full text PDF file here:
http://ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com/pharma-mkting.com/news/pmn1207-article03.pdf
