Pharma Industry News Update: 8 Sept 2017
2nd FDA “Warning Letter” of 2017 Goes to…
Cipher, for Misleading ConZip Opioid Drug Detail Aid
[From www.mmm-online.com] The FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion sent its second enforcement letter of 2017 on Wednesday, flagging Canadian drugmaker Cipher Pharmaceuticals over its promotion of opioid drug Conzip.
The agency’s warning letter to Cipher charged the drugmaker with failing to include significant risk information for Conzip in a detail aid. As a result, the agency said the aid is false and misleading.
It hasn’t helped that POC companies tout sky-high ROI figures.
Further Reading:
Pharmaceutical Landscape on Social Media
Who’s Doing What, Where
[From unmetric.com] Many pharmaceutical companies have been cautious about their social media presence. However, that’s no surprise given the advertising restrictions and potential minefields of discussing prescription medicine in an uncontrolled environment. This report looks at how 16 companies have embraced social media and the trends that have emerged in the industry over the last five years.
Due to the restrictions imposed upon the industry by the FDA, we found that pharmaceutical companies have split their social media presence into four independent silos:
- Corporate Social Profiles
- Careers in Pharma
- OTX Brand Profiles
- Branded Community Properties
Further Reading:
Digital Health Is a Dead “Buzzword”
So Says a Digital Health Venture Capitalist
[From ww.cnbc.com] I [Rob Coppedge, CEO of Echo Health Ventures] truly struggled to prepare for a recent presentation on the future of venture capital investing in the “digital health” space. The group I addressed expected another digital health pep rally – but, after much reflection, the best I could bring them was an explanation of why, despite the countless blog posts and questionable survey data to the contrary, I believe the digital health party is over and why those of us focused on long-term systemic transformation should be happy to put this hype cycle behind us.
Since 2014, roughly $16 billion in venture funding has been invested across 800-plus companies in the digital health space. If the investors of these companies were to generate the returns they are expecting, we would need to triple the public market cap of the health IT space by 2021. These are unrealistic expectations that have created an unhealthy environment for tech-enabled health care start-ups and the entrepreneurs that lead them. Only recently have the VC unicorn watchers across the blogosphere begun to question we aren’t seeing the billion-dollar success stories from other industries replicated in HCIT (health care info tech), exposing underlying concerns that threaten the return profiles of overcapitalized digital health portfolios.
