“What do physicians want?” asked Robert Nauman (right), a principle with Biopharma Advisors, at a panel about physicians and technology at the 2008 ePharma Summit. “They want help finding information fast. I think there is interactive technology out there today that will help us get there.”

New technologies don’t get picked up for several reasons: (more…)

What’s wrong with the way pharma uses e-marketing? At the annual ePharma Summit, a panel of former e-marketers agreed that too many companies think of e-strategies as a separate marketing component rather than as part of a holistic approach.

“Web sites are a natural point of integration,” said moderator Peter Justason (above) of Johnson & Johnson. “As Web people, we ended up being agents of integration. And we as a brand team had to get our act together.”

Amy Chafin of Lilly explained that most marketing teams wait until the main component of a campaign is done and then find out how to adapt it to the Web, which doesn’t always work. The campaigns have to work in parallelm and brand teams can’t wait until one piece is completely done to work on the Web.

“We had to get away from brochure-ware and not just mimic online what is in the brochures,” said Julie Holcombe of Wyeth.

Advice from the panel: (more…)

The topic of healthcare is more discussed on the Internet than Britney Spears—and it’s second only to money. But pharma still hasn’t managed to harness the Web to its full potential. That’s the consensus of a panel of industry experts at this year’s ePharma Summit, taking place today in Philadelphia.

The biggest reason? Fear. It once was considered too risky to use Web 2.0, user-generated content, and social netoworking, said Daniel Palestrant, CEO of the online doctors’ site Sermo. “But more and more CEOs are now saying that it is too risky not to do something like that. People forget that blockbuster drugs come out of situations where the outside gave to the inside.”

“Last year, user-generated content was heavily discussed,” said one attendee. “But a year later, I am concerned that we haven’t moved forward. Do we understand the role of pharma in generating user content?” (more…)

Merck and Schering-Plough have temporarily pulled the plug on their popular ad campaign for Vytorin just days after releasing news that the cholesterol-treatment didn’t reduce arterial plaque in a recent clinical trial. Trial results showed that the billion-dollar drug worked no better than Zocor, a cheaper drug found in Vytorin, the Associated Press reports.

Vytorin, however, was never approved as a plaque reducer. The drug is used to lower LDL cholesterol, thereby decreasing the risk of congenital heart failure. The clinical trial was performed to determine whether the drug could also be used to lower fatty plaque in veins and arteries, but the results weren’t positive.

A spokesperson for the drug companies stated that the ads were stopped “in light of mischaracterization and misinterpretation of the ENHANCE trial results.” Print advertisements will not be discontinued. (more…)

Here are this week’s top news stories, as reported on PharmExec.com:

More Prescriptions Through Learning: The Doctor’s Choice
New report finds that neither sales reps nor patient requests are the deciding factor when it comes to physician prescribing habits, information is—the more the better.
Click to read>>>

(2)008: Licensed to Sell
Sales representatives will now need a license to sell their wares, according to new legislation approved last week in DC. The new law creates a list of zero-tolerance regulations, but experts wonder whether they will do anything to improve sales rep/physician relationships.
Click to read>>>

DTC Report Finds Consumer Ads Lacking
New study finds that risks and side effects don’t get their fair share of time in television advertising. The authors cry out for more educational information in DTC ads—but is it necessary if the ads aren’t breaking the law?
Click to read>>>

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DTC in Canada may be closer than you think. Currently, Canada allows only reminder and disease-awareness ads for prescription drugs. But while a court case continues to rage challenging the legality of the DTC ban, an industry group is quietly setting up the infrastructure that will help companies implement what may be a more patient-friendly DTC than what we see in the United States.

CanWest MediaWorks, a media conglomerate of TV stations, newspapers, and Web sites, launched a legal challenge against Health Canada back in 2005, hoping to get in on the action and the ad dollars pharma companies spend in marketing their drugs to consumers. They reason that it’s only fair, since Canadians already have access to a considerable amount of DTC advertising through the spillover of US broadcast and print advertising. (more…)

By now you’ve probably read news accounts of a study in the American Journal of Public Health that found that rich people are more likely than poor to receive free samples of prescription drugs. If you actually read the numbers though, it turns out that things aren’t quite as simple as the headlines suggest.

The study was based on the 2003 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Several times a year, MEPS surveyors asked panel members detailed questions on healthcare expenditures, insurance, and so forth—including questions on prescription drug use and whether respondents had received any free drug samples.

The first pass through the numbers produced the results you’ve probably heard about: White people were more likely to receive samples than blacks or Hispanics; rich people were more likely than poor; the insured more likely than the uninsured. But take another pass through the data and something funny happens. (more…)