2011

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.

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.?

This just in: FDA Won't Issue Specific Guidance for Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter. Claims These Media Are Just Passing Fads! Now Back to Your Regularly-Scheduled TV Ad.

Talk about having your cake and eating it too! Commercial funding of continuing medical education (CME) and the potential for bias appear to concern many physicians, yet only a TINY MINORITY (7%) are willing to pay registration fees to eliminate or offset commercial funding sources, according to a report in the May 9, 2011, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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.

A summary of the highly anticipated 2011 results of Kantar Health's annual Stakeholder Effectiveness survey, which revealed that over two-thirds of respondents from leading companies in the pharmaceutical sector think that customer retention is a key performance measure.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #11 (21 JUNE 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.

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.

If pharma marketers are going to be successful engaging consumers (mostly women) via social media, then they need to be more sensitive about how they portray women in ads and very savvy about how they handle comments (if they allow comments).

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether drug companies have to pay their sales representatives for working overtime hours, a question that could have considerable financial impact on the industry. The question before the court in case CHRISTOPHER V. SMITHKLINE BEECHAM CORP is whether or not pharmaceutical sales representatives are exempt from overtime pay under the 'outside sales' exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. If the Supreme Court rules that pharma sales reps are NOT exempt, some sales reps worry that they will become