Last month, Facebook alerted the pharmaceutical industry to a big change in its rules. The famed social media site will no longer allow drugmakers to disable comments posted on newly created pages. And existing pages will no longer be able to do so as of August 15. This means that pharma Facebook pages will soon have a dialogue resembling the rest of the Internet, which is the goal.
Of course, this is problematic for drugmakers, which are uncomfortable - to put it mildly - to allow comments or videos to suddenly appear on their sites due to legal and regulatory concerns. As you know, if someone mentions a side effect or off-label use, a report to the FDA soon follows. In-house lawyers do not like this prospect, although such fears also keep some gainfully employed, yes?
There will be an exception - branded pages solely dedicated to a prescription drug may continue to have commenting functionality removed (back story). Nonetheless, the rule change is causing a great deal of soul searching among drugmakers that insist they want to embrace social media but continue to live in fear of the FDA and what might occur if they are unable to control Facebook content.
And so we asked a few drugmakers about their plans. No, this was not a survey nor was there a large sample size. And in general, Facebook remains a desirable tool. But two big drugmakers - Sanofi and AstraZeneca - acknowledged that, if they cannot overcome any concerns posed by the new rules, walking away from Facebook is an option. Here is what we were told...
"We haven’t made any decisions yet," an AstraZeneca spokesman wrote us. "We are taking a look at the changes Facebook is making and evaluating how they could impact the company and its regulatory responsibilities." We then asked this: "Is it fair to say one option is not using Facebook?" The reply, in a word: "Yes." Similarly, a Sanofi spokesman sent us this: "We know that patients are increasingly turning to Facebook for information and we feel it is important to be part of the dialogue. We have used moderated comments on Facebook simply as a precaution in the absence of FDA guidance. Our hope is that we can find a way to make it work. We want to stay on Facebook, we want to continue to be part of the dialogue with patients." What about abandoning Facebook? "I guess it would an option of last resort," was the response.
On the other hand, a Pfizer spokesman was adamant that Facebook remains part of the strategy. "We're definitely dedicated to see if we can work out a way to keep the site up and running and populate it with even better content...The challenge is when they make their switch and hold off from comments. It'll be a hard thing for us...I think we've learned enough, at this point, to see how we can continue as robust a dialogue as we can without encroaching on areas of conversations...We're trying to find a way to bridge that gap."
And what about walking away? "I don't see that as an option for us," we were told. "If we do it, we're gonna do it well or we're not gonna do it...At this moment in time, we're talking hypothetically. The comments section haven't been turned on, so we're gonna look and see what happens and make our decisions based on what happens. At this moment, based on converasitons we have internally, we see a significant benefit to keeping the Facebook page open."
Clearly, there the proverbial wait-and-see approach is in play, but Facebook is going to be carefully scrutinized. And while not every drugmaker may make the same decision, embracing the sort of format that Facebook is pushing will cause a great deal of consternation. Pharma readily acknowledges that having a dialogue with the public is increasingly important, but it would not be surprising if Facebook becomes less important - to some drugmakers - at least, in the short run.
pic thx to birgerking on flickr
6 Comments
We don't think pharma should walk away from facebook, fearing compliance or adverse events(AE) being reported by patients. Industry research shows only 5% of AEs are actually reported through current channels (doctors and patients calling Pharma companies). Having patients report AEs via facebook, and encouraging feedback from patients and doctors on products will help improve patient outcome. We help pharma companies monitor AEs and off-label comments in Facebook(and other Social Channels) with our platform. We also ensure Social Channels are integrated with pharma companies' current AE and REMS workflow. This makes our clients use social media effectively and be responsible corporate citizens at the same time. Won't FDA love this?
Siva Nadarajah VP, Product Strategy and Development Semantelli Corp. http://www.semantelli.com/pharma
"Compliance Ready, Life Sciences specific Social Media Platform for CRM, Drug Discovery, Market and Competitive Intelligence"
If some drug makers decide to walk away from Facebook, according to me, that essentially is like walking away from the problem. Whether Pharma or drugmakers chose to not see the patient complaint being reported on Facebook, doesn't make the patient's problems go away. The fact that some off label side effect adversely affected the patient's health, doesn't change whether it is reported or not. In fact, Pharma companies should welcome such comments because it will help them improve the drug, which is in the interest of everyone.
Or let's just say that the adverse off label side effect should have been detected during the clinical trial itself. Isn't it? Since it wasn't and now that the patient has come up with this info, should we say that process of clinical trial and the approval is flawed? Would that suffice? I don't think so. So, now that Pharma companies want to improve the process, improve the drug and in turn improve the treatment and patient's life, any information that helps in this regard should be welcome. The sooner the information is received, the sooner some action will be taken and sooner will the drug maker be able to get the improved drug to market.
Ostrich mentality is not a strategy for success.
In any case, as in the old system of doctor calling the company or patient calling the company, does the FDA monitor every call that is received by the company? In that case as well, isn't there a choice with the company to say that the patient's call was never received? Replace the call with Facebook, I think the problem persists.
On the commercial front, how is reporting a product complain on Facebook in case of a consumer brand, different for a drug brand? I think the case is far more serious in case of a drug. What is also rather inexplicable is the fact that disabling comments by admin will be fine for pages dedicated to drug brand. Not the most sensible directive from Facebook, but I wonder what the logic of this might be.
Let me end by saying that Pharma/Drug Makers should take a broader and a longer term view and see Facebook as a medium to connect to patients rather than running away from them.
"Having patients report AEs via facebook, and encouraging feedback from patients and doctors on products will help improve patient outcome." If that was the case, pharma would be ok with putting Medwatch on their TV ads, as their TV communication reaches millions at a time. Yet, they are not ready to receive THAT type of AE volume back from the population they advertise to via TV. Essentially, stopping those millions of people from reporting their AEs to Medwatch. I don't buy the free communication between them and the population they advertise to. Otherwise, each of their communication channels would have a way for AEs to be reported effectively, especially the high volume ones such as TV.
Facebook technology will be outdated before Zuckerberg ever files the IPO. It's lost 6,000,000 accounts already. I wouldn't invest a dime in social media for pharma purposes. To me it's like the airplane that used to fly the trailer for Viagra-here today, gone tomorrow.
I personally don't use Big Pharma's junk anyway, except in a situation where I would need it. There are legitimate uses for drugs, in the right situations, but overuse is widespread these days. The fact that they want to back out of Facebook only tells me that they don't want the truth about their drugs publicized. But, really it's too late, we all have eyes, and many of us can see just how destructive their drugs have been on society. Big Pharma needs to be made accountable for their dirty ways.
If you have further interest in the Adverse Effects data mentioned in this article and in these comments, my website has charts of the results of my mining this data.
Regards,
James Pricer http://ThePsychReport.com