2011

If you're thinking of developing a mobile application (app) for patients or physicians, you need to consider the myriad platforms -- hardware plus software combinations -- that are out there and determine which platform is best suited for your intended audience. Your choice of platform will impact your app's performance, maintenance, and security, which in turn will make or break the success of the app.

In a recent video titled 'What Gets PhRMA's Chairman Up Every Morning?', Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi, cited an impressive Potemkin number related to life expectancy and the pharma industry.

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.

No doubt you've heard that as of August 15, 2011, Facebook opened up comments on ALL pharma pages with some exceptions. That means that the pharmaceutical industry will no longer be able to shut off comments on their Facebook pages.

Self Care Catalysts' Patient Intelligence Insights Guide™ on Diabetes is the only integrated patient-and consumer-centric report that explores how people suffering from an invisible condition such as diabetes actually circumnavigate their health condition, using the unique Self Care Health Decision Making Dynamics framework™. It is an example of what Grace Soyao, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Self Care Catalysts Inc., a health research and strategy company, means by 'Finding the Consumer within the Patient.'

From the Audition in the Press to TV, Web, and Print Advertising. Pfizer and Amgen demonstrate how to launch a branded spokesperson campaign starting from a bit of over-the-top unregulated press relations to fully regulated TV, print, and Web advertising. It must be costing a mint!

The authors of a physician survey published in the November 8, 2010, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine conclude 'given that 83.8% of physicians have PIRs, it is clear that industry still has substantial financial links with the nation's physicians. These findings support the ongoing need for a national system of disclosure of PIRs [Physician-Drug Industry Relationships].' Such a system is part of the Physician Sunshine Law, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2012 with public disclosure of payments scheduled to begin September, 2013.

Every year without fail there are revelations about pharmaceutical companies behaving badly -- companies that have been charged with crimes such as making kickbacks to physicians, engaging in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, promoting products off label to physicians or companies that are called to testify before Congress about sub par manufacturing practices. 2010 seems to be unique in the number of companies behaving badly.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #17 (10 NOVEMBER 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.

The year 2010 was all about me. By 'me' I mean Pharmaguy, which is the Twitter handle and Facebook name of John Mack, Editor and Publisher of Pharma Marketing News. It's all about YOU too! This is where you can 'sign' the 2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook and and document that you were part of it all.