LinkedIn has become a bulletin board for pharma and biotech public relations. Too many ignorant people in healthcare, unfortunately, repost news stories that demand more scrutiny rather than highlighting key points. Examples include “the lowering of prescription drug prices” and Moderna’s new cancer vaccine, which is still in development. As members of the healthcare community, it’s our job to challenge news stories to ensure we understand what’s really going on beyond media talking points.
What is often missing is the one thing healthcare professionals should be bringing to the conversation: Critical thinking.
LinkedIn is increasingly becoming a bulletin board for pharma and biotech public relations rather than a forum where experienced healthcare professionals analyze what the news actually means. That should concern us.
The problem isn’t that people share positive developments. The problem is that too many people — including people who should know better — simply repeat headlines without interrogating the evidence behind them.
Example #1: “Prescription Drug Prices Are Going Down”
This is one of the easiest healthcare headlines to repost and one of the most complicated to interpret. Consider Medicare drug-price negotiation.
CMS negotiated Maximum Fair Prices for the first 10 drugs included in the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. CMS originally estimated that, had those negotiated prices applied in 2023, Medicare would have saved approximately $6 billion, or about 22%, across those 10 drugs. CMS also projected approximately $1.5 billion in beneficiary out-of-pocket savings in 2026.
That’s good news. But it does not support LinkedIn’s headline: “Prescription drug prices are coming down.” To do that, you’d need to explain which prices? For what drugs? For which patients? Compared to which price? Wholesale list? Net? Retail? Medicare spending? Patient cost-sharing? Commercially insured patients? Medicare beneficiaries? Patients without insurance? What about impacts on premiums, formulary placement, utilization management, rebates, and other parts of the pharma cost ecosystem?
Asking questions isn’t arguing against the price savings. It’s putting them into context. CMS specifically calls it a program targeted at certain high-spend, single-source drugs that have no generic or biosimilar competition. CMS didn’t say drug prices are going down across the board in America. That would be a boring LinkedIn post. It would also be truthful.
Example #2: “Moderna Has Developed a Cancer Vaccine”
This week’s Moderna news is a great illustration of why we all need to read beyond the headline. First, the news is very good. Moderna and Merck announced topline Phase 3 results for intismeran autogene (what Merck calls NeoRx-0833) showed positive results in combination with Merck’s Keytruda in completely resected Stage IIB-IV melanoma.
The Phase 3 INTerpath-001 study met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival. Moderna says the trial showed “clinically meaningful improvement” over pembrolizumab alone. That is a big deal. It’s great news. But when I started seeing tweets and posts about the trial results, some of the conversation quickly turned to how Moderna now had a cancer vaccine that worked.
If you read only the headline, I suppose that isn’t a crazy conclusion. But here’s what we know. First, this isn’t a vaccine being offered to the general public to prevent cancer. It is an investigational individualized neoantigen therapy.
As Moderna states, intismeran autogene is created using mRNA to target a mixture of mutations found within an individual patient’s tumor. Second, we’re talking about the Phase 3 study of patients with completely resected Stage IIB-IV melanoma treated with intismeran autogene in combination with Keytruda. Third, yes the companies are announcing positive Phase 3 results. But detailed results from the Phase 3 study have not been presented.
Overall survival data is one important endpoint we have not yet seen. Fourth, we do have very encouraging longer-term data from Phase 2b. Updated five-year follow-up results from the Phase 2b trial showed a 49% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death and a 59% reduction in the risk of distant metastasis or death with intismeran autogene plus Keytruda compared to Keytruda alone.
But FDA approval and commercial-scale manufacturing of individualized therapies are also different things. Important questions remain about regulatory review, manufacturing at scale, timing, patient selection, cost, reimbursement, and whether you can replicate these results in other tumor types. Let’s have that discussion instead of collapsing it to: “Fantastic news – Moderna’s cancer vaccine works!”
Press Releases Are Designed to Generate Enthusiasm
Hold on – there’s one more thing that healthcare professionals should keep in mind. A pharma company press release is not a peer-reviewed journal article. It’s a piece of corporate communications, designed to serve a company’s legitimate business interests.
That doesn’t mean the information is inaccurate or deceptive. It means that it’s our job to filter that information for our readers, not just pass it along. When I read that a phase III trial “met its primary endpoint,” I don’t then ask myself if I should Tweet the news.
I ask questions: What was the primary endpoint? Was it clinically significant, or just statistically significant? What was the comparator? What was the absolute risk reduction? What were the confidence intervals? How did the secondary endpoints fare? Was there a safety signal? Was overall survival reported? Has the full data set been presented/published? How was the study population selected? And most importantly: Will this improve patient care? Those are not anti-pharma questions. They are questions that pharma employees should be asking themselves.
The Same Problem Happens With FDA Approvals
There’s a familiar ritual that takes place on LinkedIn whenever the FDA approves a new drug. Within minutes you can expect to see: “Congratulations to the incredible team!” I have no issue with celebrating the culmination of years of effort by many people working to develop a therapy. However, drug approval is not where the healthcare conversation ends. Far from it. It’s where another conversation begins.
How big is the clinical benefit? How does it stack up against the current standard of care? Which patients will benefit the most? How much will it cost? Will payers cover the drug? What prior authorization hurdles are likely to be put in place? Will physicians be able to identify the right patients? Can our healthcare system effectively deliver the therapy? Will patients even start the treatment, and if so will they stay on it?
A drug can gain FDA approval and fail commercially. More importantly, it can meet its scientific objectives and still fail to create a meaningful impact on patients in the real world. Those are very different things.
Healthcare Professionals Should Be the Skeptics in the Room
Our world is seeing an ever-increasing compression of healthcare information into headlines, tweets, posts, and sound bites of 30 seconds or less. That’s why we need experienced healthcare professionals more than ever.
People in Medical Affairs, market access, commercial strategy, clinical development, HEOR, regulatory affairs and healthcare delivery know things that most people on LinkedIn do not. We know that healthcare is nuanced. We know that relative risk reduction is not the same as absolute risk reduction. We know what surrogate endpoints are. We know what a formulary restriction is. We know that list price is not necessarily the same as net price. We know that FDA approval does not always translate to payer access. We know a Phase 3 press release is quite different from the peer-reviewed publication of a full dataset.
Okay, most of us know those things. But LinkedIn has become a platform that rewards amplification more than analysis. Someone posts “BREAKING: New cancer vaccine dramatically reduces recurrence!” The knee-jerk reaction is “Incredible news!” The helpful reaction is “Looks like promising Phase 3 topline results. I can’t wait to see the absolute RFS difference, subgroup analyses, OS trajectory, safety data and how they plan to manufacture an individualized vaccine at commercial scale.” That comment will probably get you fewer likes. It will contribute much more to the healthcare discussion.
Stop Reposting. Start Interrogating.
Before healthcare professionals repost the next breathless healthcare headline, perhaps we should ask five simple questions:
- What exactly happened? Separate the headline from the underlying event.
- What does the evidence actually demonstrate? Read the study, regulatory announcement or primary source whenever possible.
- What’s missing? Look for endpoints, absolute numbers, comparator data, safety information and unanswered questions.
- Who actually benefits? “Patients” isn’t specific enough. Which patients, under what circumstances, and by how much?
- Who wants me to believe this story? Pharmaceutical companies, politicians, advocacy groups, investors, insurers, and media organizations all frame information differently.
None of this means we should become cynical. Skepticism and cynicism aren’t the same thing. Skepticism says: Show me the evidence. That’s supposed to be one of the foundations of healthcare.
We Can Do Better
LinkedIn has the potential to be an amazing platform for healthcare discussion. We have doctors, scientists, researchers, MSLs, commercial leaders, payer experts and patients. People who have spent their entire careers in pharmaceuticals all coming together to discuss current events on the same platform.
The issue is that potential goes untapped when we all do nothing but share headlines. When Medicare claims drug prices are lower, question what prices they are referring to, for what drugs and by how much. When Moderna and Merck announce positive cancer-treatment news, rejoice in the scientific advancement but also ask what the clinical data really showed and what is still left to be answered. When a pharma company shares an FDA approval, question whether that product will actually improve patient outcomes AND whether patients will be able to access it.
Healthcare needs more smart people talking about it. It doesn’t need another thousand people sharing a press release. If you work in healthcare, stop just sharing articles. Add to the conversation. Question it. Give it context. Explain what the headline doesn’t say. We, as healthcare professionals, should not be part of the dreaded PR echo chamber. We should demand proof.
By the way, when an executive posts a news story talking point without asking questions he makes himself look incompetent.
