Is the physician’s social network making a deal with the devil?
Of course, this opens a Pandora’s box. There’s nothing to say Pfizer or any other drugmaker shouldn’t participate in online forums. But the venue could, conceivably, create myriad scenarios in which, say, off-label info is conveyed or trial results are somehow whispered prematurely or selectively. The FDA, if it pays attention, will likely have its bureaucratic hands full keeping track of countless postings to ensure such agreements don’t devolve into one large, ongoing and inappropriate marketing machine.
Update:
Matthew Holt with an analysis of the deal.
Related posts:
- More Sermo and Pfizer
- Medgadget keeps the pressure on Sermo
- The AMA and Sermo
- The Kaiser whistleblower gets fired
- Catron attacks the single-payer pundits
- Why does health care cost so much?
- Bad, but not bad enough
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Sermo has shown their cards… their biz model has always been obvious, but now it has been confirmed. Data mining is a huge business today. Big Pharma has been trying to get into the mind of the physician for a long time. Their holy grail of information is what the physician was thinking when they wrote for this or that and how do they influence that decision at the point of care.
Read your EMR contracts well too. Who owns the data? There are a few companies out there planning on bascially giving away an EMR platform, but the doc signs away rights to the data.
Westchester Orthopedist – I hadn’t thought of that (EMR platforms being used to analyze how you practice). This is really disgusting. Sermo has shown their cards, why isn’t the medical community running away in protest? Are we going to let people learn how we think so that they can further target their profit-driven message to increase sales of certain drugs apart from evidence-based medicine?
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