Health IT, Pharma

Most pharmas keep Facebook pages; some plan other social media strategies

Facebook’s policy change requiring pharmaceutical companies to open their walls to public comments sparked concerns […]

Facebook’s policy change requiring pharmaceutical companies to open their walls to public comments sparked concerns that pharmas would abandon the social networking sites. It hasn’t happened.

Most pharmas that had a Facebook presence kept it, modifying their pages and monitoring comments to catch anything that might raise any U.S. Food and Drug Administration concerns. And for some pharmas, the new Facebook policy isn’t a primary concern.

“Digital communication strategy is a lot more than social media,” said Liz Cermak, chief commercial officer for Chapel Hill, North Carolina pharma company Pozen (NASDQ:POZN).

Pozen has no Facebook page and Cermak said that it’s not yet clear that the company will need one. Cermak notes that doctors prefer Sermo, a social networking site geared toward physicians (Sermo’s CEO sits on Pozen’s digital advisory board). Other digital communication tools are emerging, she says, noting the growth of mobile health software company Epocrates (NASDAQ:EPOC) as well as numerous web-based avenues preferred by consumers.

Facebook’s new commenting policy for pharmaceutical companies started on Aug. 15. The reasoning for not allowing comments in the first place was to avoid public posts of misinformation about products or health conditions. Companies were concerned about the FDA’s “fair balance” requirement that calls for product claims about a drug to be balanced with additional information about its risks.

With public comments now in play on Facebook, pharma companies are stepping up their monitoring of what people say. For example, pages for Pfizer and AstraZeneca state that in the interest of fair balance they may need to remove comments that reference a product. They add that they also can’t permit posts that offer medical advice.

WCG, a communications agency focused on healthcare, posted on its blog a spreadsheet listing the status of pharma Facebook pages. Of 62 pages listed, just 10 disappeared after Facebook’s Aug. 15 policy change. Some of those pages were those focused on particular conditions, such as UCB’s “Epilepsy Advocate” page and AstraZeneca‘s (NYSE:AZN) “Take on Depression.” But AstraZeneca still maintains its corporate presence on Facebook, as have most of the major pharmaceutical companies that were already using the site.

Zach Clayton, president of the digital marketing agency Three Ships Media, said he’s not expecting the Facebook decision to be a significant one for pharmaceutical companies largely because they’ve been slower than other industries to fully embrace social media. Pharmas remain mindful that such communication could run afoul of regulatory compliance. Compliance costs are substantial and internal approval processes can be slow, he said. Many pharmas still remain reluctant to even blog.

“Pharmaceutical companies play with high stakes, they take compliance seriously, and they’ve been a ‘late mover’ in social media,” Clayton said.

The reluctance among pharmas to more aggressively pursue healthcare social media stems in part to the lack of FDA guidelines on the matter. These guidelines will develop over time, Cermak said. But that hasn’t stopped Pozen from pursuing its own digital initiatives. The company has taken the unusual step of establishing a digital advisory board to help the company form its digital marketing strategy. Digital communication, Cermak said, is how both doctors and patients will want to receive new information about pharmaceuticals. But that communication won’t necessarily be on Facebook.

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