Can the drug industry really embrace transparency ?

Transparency.  We keep hearing about it to the point that many business people are sick of hearing the word.  Consumer products can really embrace transparency but when it comes to prescription drugs can full transparency be achieved ?

It’s important to understand that even when the FDA approves a drug it does so based on clinical trial data within a population over time.  The FDA does not require post marketing requirements on all drugs (ongoing clinical trials) but virtually all drug companies continue clinical trials once a drug is approved.   So they key question thus becomes; if new side effects are detected and statistically significant what steps should the drug industry take to inform patients and HCP’s ?”

First let’s take a step back.  The key question that is troubling a lot of people is “will a drug company report more side effects or adverse events for a drug that has hundreds of millions of dollars in sales thus putting patients ahead of sales ?” As Shakespeare said “ah, there’s the rub” .  Right now that confidence level is NOT there but in all fairness analyzing statistical drug data is not easy.

So then let’s look at it from the patients point of view.  If you were taking a prescription medication and new clinical trials showed that people taking this medication were more likely to develop say insomnia, would you want to know that ? I believe the answer to that is “yes”.  I also believe that empowered patients are a lot smarter than DTC marketers give them credit for and that a lot of them can use information via the Internet to determine if the benefits of taking the drug outweigh the risks of the health condition. Patients may also do some research on what other medications are out there that could be safer with less side effects.

So how can the drug industry become more transparent ? Well first we need to understand that they can’t become totally transparent because a lot of information they have could only be understood by a physician or other HCP.   Second, there are a boatload of lawyers out there who make a very good living from litigation agains big pharma.  I believe people have the right to sue if their is negligence such as hiding information but usually the only ones to benefit from such litigation are the law firms, patients usually get small cuts.

The answer in transparency lies in building a bridge between patients, customers and medical marketing.  This means that drug companies have to do a better job informing and communicating ongoing clinical trial data as well information on how long term use of the drug effects patients.   This could be done via an ongoing CRM program that balances patient friendly information with valuable information that patients are looking for but so far most big pharma companies have failed to do this because it requires a shift in thinking from new Rx’s to current patients (mass marketing to marketing to one).

The reality is that even though the drug industry has not really embraced transparency patients and consumers are getting information on prescription drugs via an end run on the Internet.  Pharma therefore needs to decide whether they want to be part of that conversation of whether they want to say “we’re studying the data” and thus risk losing patients to half truth information.   Transparency is no longer an option today is a must and pharma is going to have to determine just how wide that door is going to open.