Pharma Industry News Update: 9 August 2016
Patient Centricity #FAIL: Do Patient Surveys Induce Physicians to Prescribe More Opioids?
As the country struggles to control the epidemic of overdoses and deaths from prescription opioids, many medical professionals and policy makers are challenging the wisdom of asking patients to rate how hospital employees manage pain. Doing so, they argue, creates a dangerous incentive for doctors to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive painkillers.
But, will patients be satisfied?
In July #Pharma Spent Money on TV Advertising Like There Was No Tomorrow!
Pharma marketers must have missed the memo about the dog days of summer. TV spending by the top 10 pharma advertisers topped $140 million, making the total for July the highest since January, according to data from real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv. [Also read: “Big Pharma Spending on TV Ads Like a Drunken Sailor” and “Ad Agency Clients Are Most Interested in Advertising on TV“]
Disease awareness campaigns were prominent last month, with two marketers debuting in the top 10 group. Merck, which began a campaign to promote the importance of HPV vaccinations in June, landed at No. 7, spending $9.9 million split between that HPV ad and an ongoing campaign aimed at encouraging shingles vaccinations for older people. Merck markets Gardasil for HPV and Zostavax for shingles.
Truly Beyond the Pill: Google and GSK Team Up to Launch “Bioelectronics Medicine”
A partnership between two tech and healthcare juggernauts may soon do their part to end the “better living through chemistry” motto and skip the pills by moving from chemistry to technology.
Google’s parent company Alphabet has partnered with leading British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline to launch a new “bioelectronics medicine” company.
More about bioelectronics medicine here…
Two Case Studies of Pharma Marketing Influence Over Science & Journal Publications
Two recent medical journal articles confirm that drug industry control over the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of clinical drug trials has turned many scientific publications into marketing tools. It has enabled the industry to selectively report positive results, hide negative results, manipulate statistical tools for favorable outcomes, and underplay problems.
Related article: “Researchers Demand APA Retract ‘Deviant’ Celexa Article That Promotes Rx for Kids”
PhRMA Puts the Cost of Medicines in Context from Its Perspective
PhRMA’s updated Prescription Medicines: Costs in Context report explains how competition among brand-name medicines, high generic utilization rates and aggressive tactics by insurers and pharmacy benefit managers to negotiate lower prices all help to keep costs under control. Costs in Context also dives into recent advances in treating devastating diseases, challenges and opportunities for biopharmaceutical companies in the rapidly changing marketplace and policy solutions the drug industry needs to focus on to continue delivering innovative treatments to patients.
Also read “PhRMA Plans to Seize Control of Public Narrative Over Drug Prices with Massive Ad Campaign”
