Internet Websites: Patient education or DTC?
At an e-marketing conference Mas Matsuda, Associate General Counsel and executive director at Amgen, told attendees marketers may soon need to reconsider their online strategies in light of new regulatory developments. According to M&M Magazine: Matsuda posed a series of hypothetical questions to just over 100 attendees of CBI's 8th annual Forum on e-Marketing, including: What if a two-year moratorium is put on e-marketing? That's a good question but there are several parts to eMarketing initiatives and not all of them are considered DTC advertising.
Recent research from eMarketer and Manhattan Research clearly indicate that pharma product websites are ranked lowest when patients research medical conditions and even prescription drugs. The environment has changed and consumers don't really trust pharma product websites to give them all the information they need. Consumers do, however, go to pharma product websites to read about safety information. So the question then becomes are prescription drug websites DTC advertising or patient educational materials? To answer that question each product website would have to be reviewed separately as there are some areas that are strictly promotional and some that are educational.
DTC on the Internet right now primarily consists of paid search and ads placed on sites. Paid search can actually help patients learn more about medications as well as health issues and the ads placed online seem to tactically placed on health sites, like specific disease conditions within Web MD pages. To restrict product websites would do the public a great disservice. Where would they go for information on medications? They certainly don't get all the information they need from their physicians and that is one of the reasons they go online.
I have long said that all prescription drug sites should be required to include disease state information as well as links to organizations that provide third party unbiased information. I have also said that drug companies should encourage patients to register at product sites so that a database can be maintained to keep patients up to date on new warnings or side effects of their prescriptions as drugs continue to go through clinical trials. Wouldn't you want to be notified if a new side was reported for a medication that you are taking? I know I would...
It is essential that eMarketing people engage their legal and regulatory people with trends of what is happening online. They need to understand how consumers use the web for health information and where they go when looking for health information. This is why you should be a subscriber to Manhattan Research. Rather than just send them the data you need to sit with them and explain what is happening but more importantly why it's happening. As you communicate more with legal and regulatory people your online initiatives may get buy-in from these key team members.