eMarketing guidelines for health; A common sense approach

Mar/11/2010 05:32

Laughable. That was how one person I talked to perceived the recommended guidelines from PhRMA on Internet marketing for the drug industry. Besides not speaking for the millions of patients who use the Internet it clearly shows an industry that is "out of touch" with empowered patients who have become consumers of healthcare. Read More...

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PhRMA recommended guidelines for drug Internet Marketing are silly & Who speaks for patients ?

Mar/10/2010 10:50

The drug company lobbyist group, PhRMA, wants the FDA to adopt a “universal symbol” for small-space media (such as Twitter or Facebook status updates) that would link directly to side effect information. However the "universal symbol" could be transparent to consumers at a time when most consumers do not trust the FDA. Here is a breakdown of the new guideline suggestions. Read More...

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Good health has a lot of benefits including more sex but are Americans interested ?

Mar/10/2010 07:07

Headline on CNN.com: Good health equals good sex. Healthier men, no matter their age, are going to have better sex more frequently and desire it more often than healthier women. And a healthier sex life could mean a longer life. But who needs to be healthy when there is Viagra, Cialis and Levitra ? Read More...

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20 Drug sales reps a week ?

Mar/09/2010 06:04

Doctor doesnt welcome drug co reps arms crossed i stock two humans 500

According to a new report, 98 percent of physicians say their offices are visited by up to 20 reps each week from the pharmaceutical or medical device industries. And you thought that the purge within pharma was going to result in less sales calls by sales reps who offer little value except to give free samples. Read More...

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"I will never go away" a patient says but who set up this page and who was responsible for maintaining it ?

Mar/08/2010 10:19

Good morning Sanofi, I had your drug Taxotere and as you can see from me photo this is what my scalp looks like 4 years later. Do you have any comment to make? According to Bruce Grant "this page (http://www.facebook.com/sanofiaventis0) has been active since at least mid-2008 and appears to have been set up by sanofi-aventis associates and/or alumni (perhaps ex-US). Click the "Sanofi aventis + fans" tab, scroll to the bottom, and keep clicking "Older Posts" to get a sense of the history of this account. Cold comfort to s-a, though, who received the full blast of the negative PR. How could this happen? Read More...

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Use of social media for health: A common sense approach

Mar/08/2010 07:04

It's been fun watching consumer packaged good companies slowly realize that social media is not the answer to their marketing and sales problems. Most marketers know that social media is just one small part of an integrated marketing plan that today has to be executed to near perfection in order to be effective. Regardless of what the FDA says or does social media is NOT the answer to a DTC marketers needs. Read More...

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Doctors only get about 10 percent of health care costs in their pockets, but they control about 80 percent.

Mar/05/2010 05:31 Filed in: Medical Costs Physicians #in

In an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Howard Brody, professor of family medicine and director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, writes that the medical profession, unlike other groups, has made little effort to curtail future medical costs. Physicians, Dr. Brody maintains, are not “innocent bystanders” to spiraling health care costs but have been complicit in their failure to take an active role in curtailing them Read More...

Tags: Costs

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FDA: Getting tough with everyone

Mar/04/2010 09:48 Filed in: FDA Letters

Welcome to a new tougher FDA. Not only are they increasing their regulatory oversight they intend to put people in jail. The FDA plans to increase prosecutions of pharmaceutical and food industry executives as part of an effort to refocus its criminal division which has been under attack in Congress and is criticized in a new government report, the WSJ said this morning. Read More...

Tags: Food

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Time for medical device manfufacturers to be held to same standards as pharma

Mar/03/2010 04:21 Filed in: Medical Devices #in

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FDA Finds Problems With Insulin Pumps ‘Across Manufacturers" was the headline in this mornings' Wall Street Journal. Concerns Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants was the story headline in the NY Times. Over the past year we have heard stories about "rebates" payed to physicians who suggested certain medical device products. Federal health officials say an implant from Zimmer Holdings Inc., which appears to be effective in treating spinal problems has serious questions about whether company payments to doctors influenced the device's trial data. It's time for the FDA to hold medical device manufacturers to the same standards as drug companies. Read More...

Tags: insulin Pumps

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Why are more people going online for health information ? Just look at the headlines

Mar/03/2010 10:34 Filed in: Online health information

First we heard how good Fish Oil could be for people who have high triglycerides, now a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court claims that the makers and sellers of certain supplements contain high levels of PCB compounds -- man-made industrial chemicals -- have failed to alert consumers as required under California's right-to-know law. The Internet has provided consumers with a wealth of news sources but a lot of health news is confusing consumers whose only choice is to spend a lot of time online searching for truth. Read More...

Tags: What's the truth ?

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Mobile marketing is growing fast but where is pharma ?

Mar/02/2010 07:11 Filed in: Mobile DTC Marketing

Nearly one-half of iPhone users, as well as 30% of iPod touch users, have made a health-related inquiry on their device, based on data from mobile ad network Greystripe. A majority of those who do use their device for health inquiries also have a health-related application installed. With projected growth in mobile application marketing to be in double digits and traditional DTC marketing channels becoming less effective it's time to make the leap. Read More...

Tags: Smartphones

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Content marketing: When will the drug industry get it ?

Mar/01/2010 09:08 Filed in: Internet & healtcare marketing

Content marketing spending never saw the recession. For the third straight year, marketers are planning to spend significantly more on their content marketing efforts in 2010. For 2010, 59% of marketing professionals surveyed plan to increase their spending on content initiatives (as compared to 56% in 2009 and 42% in 2008). Only 7% are planning to decrease spending in this area. Where is pharma when it comes to content marketing ? Nowhere to be found.... Read More...

Tags: Content Marketing

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