Jun/29/2008 07:31
Prescription meds
are the new drug of choice for rock and movie stars,
some of whom have fallen prey to lethal doses.
Hawthorne Heights guitarist Casey Calvert was felled
late last year after mixing opiates with Vicodin, and
Dark Knight star Heath Ledger overdosed in January
from a deadly cocktail of oxycodone, hydrocodone,
diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine. Eva
Mendes reportedly entered rehab earlier this year for
prescription drug abuse, and the new film Charlie
Bartlett is about a kid who sells drugs at school to
become popular. And he doesn't sell weed, coke or
smack; he sells prescription pills. So will it be
only a matter of time before the media and Congress
start to blame drug companies and DTC for
prescription drug abuse? Read
More...
Jun/28/2008 06:48
"If you start
putting a greater emphasis on doing [testing]
premarket, you greatly increase the cost of clinical
trials, which may lead companies to rethink
developing new drugs in this area," said Alan
Goldhammer, deputy vice president at Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers of America. Of all the
dumb things to say this has to rank up at the top. Mr
Goldhammer is talking about the the Food and Drug
Administration considering tougher standards for new
and current diabetes drugs. Read
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Jun/25/2008 04:07
So
what is REMS and how is it going to affect DTC and
drug sales? Well here is a short primer on this new
FDA legislation and word of warning “doctors don’t
like it..in fact they hate it” ! At it’s best REMS is
meant to protect patients but at it’s worst it scares
the hell out of physicians and adds more paperwork to
medical practices that already have too many
paperwork. Read
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Jun/23/2008 05:36
Monday’s usually
mean the start of another work week but for pharma
the start of a work week can bring lots of headaches.
Let’s see we have the Justice Department looking into
the marketing and approval of Paxil, Lilly is waiting
on word from the FDA on it’s competitor to Plavix
(currently handicapped at 60% approval) and as more
information comes out about the untimely death of Tim
Russert many are asking the question “so even taking
my cholerestol medication may not prevent heart
disease?”. Yep just another Monday of challenges that
pharma continues to be proactive about.
Read
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Jun/19/2008 05:35
Pfizer managed to
add another $5 billion to their bottom line yesterday
by announcing that they have reached agreement with a
generic company to end litigation over patent
disputes. The agreement still has to be reviewed by
the the FTC which has taken a hard look at anything
involving drug companies but if it stands Lipitor
will not be generic here in the US until 2011.
Read
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Jun/17/2008 03:32
If
you believe that DTC serves a purpose, to inform
patients and consumers about treatment options and be
proactive in their healthcare choices, than the
agreement of some drug makers to limit DTC for new
products for six months after approval is a copout
and stinks of executives who are not willing to walk
the walk and talk the talk when it comes to DTC. This
is a bad agreement for everyone but perhaps the
biggest losers in this agreement are
consumers. Read
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Jun/15/2008 12:20
When the model is
broken fix it ! When you can’t fix it and the pieces
don’t fit together anymore look to the outside for
new pieces. If you go to the DTC conventions and
seminars you are sure to see a lot of new faces
because pharma feels that in order to be good
marketers people need to spend time in sales or other
functions. This outdated six-sigma process is due to
the belief that marketing is a process not an art and
thus you have the problem at hand.
Read
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Jun/13/2008 05:38
John Mack over at
his pharma marketing blog
thinks that
‘social media is not all its cracked up to be”.
Well sorry John but for marketers to take that
advice and continue to ignore social media would
be a huge mistake. John feels that because people
are not using the social media of his site that
social media is not what it pretends to be but
like I wrote to John today; “it has to be of value
to the consumer/patient”. Read
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Jun/10/2008 09:36
So
what do you do when your brand is being talked about
negatively in the press and on social media sites?
Well first you hold a round table that only has one
side and then you launch a back approach to
advertising with general disease information that
leads people to your brand. This back door marketing
approach has no respect for people’s intelligence and
stinks. Rather than address the issues head on Pfizer
has chosen to ignore it with double talk.
Read
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Jun/09/2008 03:18
There is a lot of
great information on the Web concerning social media
demographics but don’t take the data for face value
unless you can look social media through your
audiences eyes. The most recent information comes by
way of eMarketer which posted demographics of baby
boomers who use social media. A DTC marketer may look
at this data and validation of not addressing this
channel but that would be a huge mistake.
Read
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Jun/05/2008 04:20
From the Pfizer
round-table on Chantix comes this quote “real-world,
post-market reports aren’t the gold standard of
clinical research and shouldn’t be interpreted as
such”. If you think that is puzzling than the
acknowledgement by Joe Feczko, Pfizer’s chief medical
officer, that the suicide issue appeared largely in
the spontaneous reports that trickle in from the real
world as opposed to in clinical tests will definitely
make you scratch your head. Read
More...
Jun/05/2008 05:47
An
effort to push doctors to switch from hand-writing
prescriptions to using new digital technology is
gaining momentum in Congress, with top Republican and
Democratic lawmakers planning to include similar
provisions in their versions of a key Medicare bill.
If this in fact becomes policy it will lead to the
Web as the primary channel to reach physicians and
patients with product and health information.
Read
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