Time for Pharma to Face Social Media Fears?

 As tools like Facebook and Twitter become a permanent reality of human interaction, savvy businesses are standing up and taking notice. Businesses are increasingly social media-literate, integrating social media into their existing business processes and strategies as they seek to capitalize on and tap into these new avenues of consumer penetration. Yet the pharmaceutical industry remains apprehensive about jumping on the social media bandwagon. 

With strict regulatory and compliance demands from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), pharma’s reluctance to embrace the social media trend comes as no surprise. Pharma companies are bound to adhere to the guidelines of the FDA’S Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC), which aims to ensure that prescription drug information is truthfully conveyed to the public. While the communication guidelines for print and broadcast media are explicit, the DDMAC has not formalized guidance for communication in the context of interactive digital media. This ambiguity leaves what is deemed appropriate for social media communication open to the DDMAC’s discretion—and consequently, many pharma companies are hesitant to broach this new territory . . .