Now Hear This

As discussed at length on EyeonFDA blog, there will be a public hearing on the use of social media and its use in the pharma/biotech industry.  This FDA hearing will take place on November 12 and 13, and really has been a long time coming.  Social media has been a sort of unregulated medium for all sorts of things in the pharma world, from advertising to clinical trial recruitment to DTC (direct to consumer) publications.  It seems that the FDA has been slow to react to the viral potential of social media, issuing a warning letter here and there when it comes across a piece of marketing that it finds obtrusive or provides nebulous information to consumers about a product.  Just like with other forms of marketing, unregulated social media has the potential to take advantage of an uneducated public, which is especially dangerous when speaking of pharmaceuticals  There should be some sort of formal documentation from regulatory authorities about how social media can and should be used by the pharma/biotech industry for various purposes.

I don't think that the use of social media by pharma should be banned because Twitter, Facebook, and blogging can be very effective ways of properly informing the public about a topic/product or even inviting public opinion in an informal fashion.  There are lots of companies that use the above mentioned social media platforms to keep consumers up to date with the company and its products.  However pharma has a bad reputation of using media in less than completely ethical fashions to benefit itself, so we cannot rely on the industry to regulate itself.  Hopefully this hearing next month will elicit some good, solid recommendations (maybe even a formal guidance document) from the FDA on what can and can't be done with social media because like it or not, social media is here to stay.

For some light reading, check this link to the official FDA release