Drug companies are waiting for the FDA online marketing guidelines (time)

Charlie Kimball, a diabetic Indy car driver shows his helmet racing and driving. His helmet is designed so that it can sip a juice through a tube and the wheel is equipped with a device to monitor sugar in the blood during a Keeler raceScott / St. Petersburg Times / ZUMApress

On Twitter, followers of nearly $ 1,300 professional car racing driver Charlie Kimball monitor his every gesture: the countdown to main; races television interviews Dinner in Sonoma, California. It is difficult to not be inspired by an essential detail of Kimball story: the age of 25 years is a few professional runners the planet to be diagnosed with diabetes. This is partly why, Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant continued Kimball complex campaign in which he regularly on tweets take two insulin enterprise products. "Simply used my Levemir FlexPen" he tweeted last June, referring to the injector disposable insulin of Novo Nordisk. Levemir appears on the front of Kimball racing uniform, his car and on its official page of Twitter, racewithinsulin. "This is an excellent way to connect with the diabetes community," he explains.

Racewithinsulin campaign turned Kimball into a rock star to the diabetes community. He has also made him one of the most provocative examples of pharmaceutical companies how smart are navigating the social-media space emerged largely non-regulated. The u.s. Food and Drug Administration has strict guidelines on how drugs may be marketed in newspapers and magazines and in 1997, had published rules for broadcast media - primarily, that companies must disclose information based on the known risks of the drug. But there are no rules for social media. (See the top 10 breakthroughs medical 2010).

This month, however, the FDA should issue guidelines on how pharmaceutical companies market drugs, viagra Ambien on outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and Google. For these companies, this is no small matter. Internet & American Life project's Research Centre Pew believes that 61% of adults obtain of online health information. Analysts say accounts for an increasing share of the approximately 4 billion pharmaceutical companies online marketing spend each year advertising their products. In the first half of this year, global companies spent $ 5.7 billion so-called search ads on outlets such as Yahoo!, according to the interactive advertising Bureau a coalition of companies that sell more advertising online at United States "there is much at stake," says Jeffrey k. times, Advocate General Assistant for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association of America, a group of trade in Washington, D.C., leader.

Surprisingly, it is the pharmaceutical industry has been at the forefront of displacement of the FDA to establish rules social-media. Companies to realize their traditional sites and advertising strategies are no longer sufficient tools to promote products in a competitive marketplace in which doctors, pharmacists and consumers aggressively exchanges information on medicine on blogs. Companies are also aware that "if they cannot fully participate in the social media conversation they are marginalized,", says John Mack, editor of the Pharma Marketing Blog, which attracts approximately 25,000 readers of the industry a month. Impetus is to protect the credibility of enterprises to the rogue sell suspicious online outlets. Part of the push is to address the practical difficulties, like how to explain sufficiently the risks of the drug within the boundaries of a tweet 140 characters. Or two lines of a sponsored by Google ad text? (See the time and covers medical health).

Last year, the FDA has sent letters to 14 companies - including Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline - warned against the use of social media to market products in some cases calling efforts "misleading." A December 2009 letter is rendered Bayer concerning Mirena, a drug, he Central on the Mom Web site promotion until February of the same year. The campaign included a conversation by script from a nurse practitioner, Barb Dehn, personal website bills itself as "an award-winning author and a recognized national health expert." Ms. said Dehn consumers, is "a birth-control method of spontaneous intimacy." The FDA has said the script "or" overstated "the proven effectiveness of Mirena", and did not mention the possibility that women who take the drug while pregnant may lose a baby or become infertile. Bayer has is no longer a Mirena social media campaign. In another case, in November 2009, the federal authorities sent a letter similar to a company of Tennessee Utah Web site claimed to sell products prevent the H1N1 virus, with meta tags like "kill the virus of swine influenza" and the "swine flu" - all words often regard by consumers. The FDA had not approved the product as a remedy against the H1N1 virus.

In the absence of formal rules, some pharmaceutical companies have been jovial social-media space entry. That is why the case of Charlie Kimball is instructive. He started the race at the age of 16. Space of a week in the fall of 2007, while racing in Great Britain, Kimball says, he loses 25 lb (11.4 kg). Doctors he quickly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. "What is diabetes?" he remembers asking. Kimball, who is based in Indianapolis, has returned to Anne Peters, a physician in California, who has been visiting Novo Nordisk. Kimball says she suggests that he tell the company in its history. In April 2009, it had signed a contract with Novo Nordisk to promote his insulin. The company initially scrapped his plans to discuss medical treatment on Twitter. "I find it is an excellent way to remove the curtain on the life of a racing - driver to remind people I am a person with diabetes who use insulin two [products] to manage my disease,"he said."" Amber Morley, Director of the Office of Novo Nordisk in Princeton, N.J., developed an agreement with business regulatory team. If Kimball mentioned products of Novo Nordisk on Twitter, it should be followed by the generic name for the drug, as well as a link to more information about the risks and benefits of the drug. "We are trying to do so properly, so I can play according to the rules," says Kimball. (Comment on this story).

But yet again, there are clear rules. Novo Nordisk is exploring ways to extend the campaign of Kimball. The company has also developed other media social awareness targeting hemophiliacs. Unresolved, is if the pharmaceutical companies are responsible for claims of third parties on a drug risks or benefits on the points of sale like Wikipedia. Until the FDA publishes guidelines, it will be like driving on a highway without specifying that the maximum speed limit signs.

See Healthland health news.

See photos of the week time.