2011

How much money the pharmaceutical industry spends on Internet marketing, direct-to-consumer advertising, and physician detailing are always topics of interest and 2010 was no exception. 2010 was, however, a turning point in bringing more attention to payments made to physicians for speaking, consulting, and research.

Once again the Brits have beaten the US in issuing useful guidelines for social media use by the pharmaceutical industry! As I reported back in April, 2011, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), which oversees the self-regulatory code of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), published

A conversation with Elizabeth A. Cermak, EVP, and Chief Commercial Officerat Pozen, Raj Amin, CEO and Co-Founder of HealthiNation, and Bonin Bough, Senior Global Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, about the who, what, why behind the Pozen Digital Advisory Board, an esteemed group of digital thought-leaders both in and outside of healthcare.

This article focuses on Adobe Connect for eDetailing, a specific collaboration between Adobe and ConnectSolutions, a leading provider of private cloud deployments of web conferencing and collaboration solutions.

FDA's revised draft guidance calendar for year 2011 is missing 'Promotion of Prescription Drug Products Using Social Media Tools,

Patients also need more effective counseling about their medications. In an effort to make drug package inserts easier to read and understand -- and perhaps to save money on printing costs -- the FDA is planning to test single-page consumer information sheets that would replace the multi-page package inserts and medication guides widely used in retail pharmacies. However 'dumbed down' the label gets, it is still important that physicians and pharmacists take a more pro-active role in educating consumers about the drugs they are taking.

Guesstimating Total Pharma Web Ad Spending. Internet advertising revenue in the United States totaled $26.0 billion for the full year of 2010. How much of this was spent by pharma? Best guesstimate: $1 billion, which accounts for about 11% of the total pharma physician and consumer ad spend.

The long-awaited social media guidance from the FDA -- whenever it arrives -- may turn out to be nothing more than a stamp of approval on activities in which the industry is currently engaged. Practically every issue that FDA guidance is expected to address has already been handled independently by a few pioneering pharmaceutical companies. Rather than waiting for FDA's anti climatic guidelines, Pharmaguy decided to publish The Pharmaguy Social Media Timeline™ now, at a time when the industry already has set precedents in every social media application.

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.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #8 (28 APRIL 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.