This article explains why even though various business sectors have fervently embraced social media as a product marketing tool, FDA-regulated industries have been slow to adopt this practice. It also explores FDA’s emerging policy on Internet marketing activities and specifically the potential risks associated with using social media to disseminate promotional messages and scientific information about FDA-regulated prescription drugs and devices. It then provides suggestions for weathering the next few months before FDA issues a guidance document on the promotion of prescription products using social media tools.
Conversations through online social media communities among healthcare professionals, consumers, and others about FDA regulated prescription products and disease states have been taking place for some time. Sermo, for example, one of the largest online physician social networks spanning 68 specialties in 50 states, provides a venue for over 112,000 physicians to exchange observations in real-time about drugs, devices and clinical issues. Consumers are also discussing these issues. Over 60 million consumers used social media to communicate and research health and medical information in 2008.[1]
What is lacking in many of these social media communications, however, is an authoritative source of information about prescription products and the conditions and diseases for which they are used. As experts on their products, many companies want to serve in this capacity. They want to disseminate information about their products through social media to ensure that accurate, transparent, high-quality information is being communicated to social media participants. Many feel that this could be one of the best ways to reach target audiences effectively.
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