Monthly Archives: September 2018

Business as usual for drug companies

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  • Despite Trump’s plan to lower drug prices companies still hiked prices far more often than they cut them. This year through the end of July, there were 4,412 brand-name drug price increases and 46 price cuts, a ratio of 96-to-1.
  • Pharma continues to try and confuse the issue of drug pricing by blaming hospitals and PBM’s.

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Smartwatch sales are going to double but…

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  • IDC is predicting that wearable sales in 2018 will grow by just 6.2 percent to 122.6 million body gadgets compared to 2017 sales of 115 million units.
  • Smartwatches will buck that trend, with IDC expecting smartwatch shipments to grow 39 percent on 2017 shipments of 33 million units to 46.2 million in 2018. Apple Watch accounts for just under half of all smartwatch shipments.
  • The use of smatwatches should be encouraged by health insurer, but HCP’s are still not on board.

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Social Media and health: the conversations are around experiences, both good and bad

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  • Social networking use among Internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled –from   22%   to   42%.
  • This demographic is a sweet spot for healthcare marketers.
  • News sites still remain the most trusted online healthcare resource (68 percent), while user-generated contributions on Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs are used less frequently (54 percent), according to results from a national consumer survey conducted by Makovsky + Company. Continue reading →

It borders on medical malpractice

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  • According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 80 percent of adults and about one-third of children now meet the clinical definition of overweight or obese.
  • The medical community’s primary response to this shift has been to blame fat people for being fat.
  • Medical students receive an average of just 19 hours of nutrition education over four years of instruction—five hours fewer than they got in 2006.

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FDA DTC guidelines are dated

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  • Fair balance in TV commercials is largely ignored.
  • Today, people go online for health information and go to pharma product websites BEFORE requesting an Rx.
  • The “safety page” on pharma websites is still one of the top page views of the website visitors, but they find the content to hard to understand and confusing.
  • Online health seekers are turning to social media more and more to share their experiences with prescription drugs.

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