Pharmaceutical companies drive demand for their drugs through direct-to-consumer advertising on television, the Internet, the radio and in print. An AARP poll found that 90% of Americans have seen or heard one such advertisement, most commonly on television. In fact, a study published in the Annals of Family Medicine notes that Americans see as many as 16 hours of TV prescription drug ads per year.
But companies like Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline are targeting more than just prescription drug users. They’re also aggressively marketing pharmaceuticals to doctors, a practice that the New England Journal of Medicine says can lead to overdiagnosis, overtreatment and overuse of medications.
A new NEJM article looks at the ways in which Big Pharma markets to doctors in the Digital Age and finds that it employs personalized advertising techniques based on user data in much the same way that E-commerce advertisers do.
“We know from traditional marketing tools that their impact can be harmful,” said Dr. Christopher Manz of the University of Pennsylvania according to Vox. “But this digital marketing today has much more breadth and depth than the previous kinds of marketing. Now it’s like having a sales rep in the exam room with you.”
As the Vox article describes, a transparency provision of the Affordable Care Act requires pharmaceutical and medical device companies to disclose payments made to physicians and hospitals for activities that include promotional speeches, research grants and medical conference trips. While this has clamped down on the “traditional marketing tools” described by Dr. Manz, BigPharma has found a way to skirt the law by investing more in digital marketing techniques.
Here are some of the ways that pharmaceutical companies are using digital technologies to influence doctors and drive their already-high profits:
Georgetown University professor of medicine Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman says that “Pharma companies control the discourse on drugs and diseases in both the medical and consumer communities.”
This may add up to a “win” for drug companies in the form of profit margins that are even higher than those enjoyed by oil and gas companies. The loser, however, in many cases is patients who are unnecessarily prescribed drugs that cause them harm and even death.
To learn how you can hold drug companies responsible for injuries their products cause, please contact the Denver/national mass tort attorneys at Andrus Wagstaff for a complimentary case review.
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