Health Beat: Time to crack down on prescription data-mining

10/23/2009

It's time to crack down on prescription data-mining, a pharma marketing practice that outstrips direct-to-consumer advertising in spending, writes Naomi Freundlich at the HealthBeat blog. Freundlich cites a Pew Prescription Project report on the lucrative data-mining practice as just one of the ways drug companies market directly to physicians -- and the blog takes a good look at both other advertising channels, such as continuning medical education and speakers bureaus, and ways that state and federal alawmakers are working to reduce the inappropriate influence of marketing on prescribing.

Freundlich writes:

In the end, there is clearly a greater need for transparency in the marketing practices of drug companies. If physicians and patients knew that their personal data was being manipulated to help companies sell drugs they... just might speak out about it. We also need to make a strong commitment to counter-detailing—putting together independent groups of experts who gather unbiased research on best treatment practices and visit doctors in their offices just like drug company reps do.