2011

Plenty of attention being paid to pharmaceutical marketing fraud and abuse cases in blogs and in the general media. But there hasn't been much attention paid to good compliance solutions or best practices. That's the mission of the Good Promotion Practices Alliance (GPP), which is co-sponsored by Reprints Desk and Prolifiq Software.

Should a PR firm or an interactive marketing agency be in charge of pharma social media campaigns?

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising spending suffered a 'double dip' recession between 2007 and 2010, according to data presented in the AdAge Insights Whitepaper

When asked what the # 1 concern pharmaceutical marketers have regarding using social media, the adverse event reporting (AER) boogey man is cited most often. The urge to avoid this boogey man at all costs may have more to do with CEO compensation that with fears of rank-an-file marketers.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #15 (12 OCTOBER 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.

A study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers of 192 pharmaceutical advertisements (83 full unique advertisements) in biomedical journals found that only 18 percent (15) were compliant with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines, and over half failed to quantify serious risks including death.

Pharmaceutical marketers have jumped on the mobile application bandwagon as more and more companies roll out health-related applications for smartphones and touchpads such as Apple's iPhone and iPad. But will the FDA regulate certain smartphone apps as medical devices? This article discusses the regulatory and other issues associated with pharma developed or sponsored health apps.

Lipitor Won't Go Gentle Into that Good Generic Night. Pfizer is taking a number of steps to protect it's Lipitor franchise and it hopes that many patients currently taking Lipitor will remain loyal to the brand.

Many critics of pharma-supported CME believe this support leads to bias. Between 9 May 2011 and 13 September 2011, readers of Pharma Marketing News were asked to answer a few short questions relating to potential bias in industry-supported CME programs and how to limit the need for industry funding of CME. The results are summarized in this article.

The pharmaceutical industry has been very generous in making payments to physicians. Last year (2010), for example, a mere dozen pharmaceutical companies paid $760 million to physicians and other health care providers for consulting, speaking, research and expenses. On average, how much do you think that comes to for every physician in the U.S.?