The Trend Continues

By: Gary Miller, CIS Compliance Specialist
garymiller@cis-partners.com

Another development within the realm of Healthcare and Big Pharma continues the recent trend to turn the focus of these businesses back to the well being of the consumers. The FDA recently announced a partnership with WebMD that will enhance the consumer’s ability to get the most recent information regarding all FDA monitored items including food, drugs, and cosmetics. As seen on the FDA News announcement letter, the partnership includes:

• A new online consumer health information resource on WebMD.com(www.webmd.com/fda): Consumers can access information on the safety of FDA-regulated products, including food, medicine and cosmetics, as well as learn how to report problems involving the safety of these products directly to the FDA. In addition, WebMD will bring the FDA public health alerts to all WebMD registered users and site visitors that request them. The cross-linked joint resource will also feature FDA’s Consumer Updates—timely and easy-to-read articles that are also posted on the FDA’s main consumer Web page (www.fda.gov/consumer).
• FDA contributions to WebMD The Magazine: FDA Consumer Updates will also be featured at least three times a year in WebMD’s bimonthly magazine, which reaches nearly nine million consumers. The magazine is distributed to physician’s office waiting rooms across the country.

Combined with tighter restrictions on sales representatives’ interactions with physicians, and the numerous state rulings to no longer make available physician prescribing data to the pharmaceutical companies (as I’ve discussed previously in my articles), we can see that the consumer remains in the forefront of many decisions made by industries. WebMD provided an obvious partner to continue this push to put the consumer first, since it has had a “longstanding mission of providing for Americans access to credible and relevant health information." With the government continuing to implement changes and innovations, the future looks bright for the public.

Sources:
FDA Teams With WebMD For New Online Consumer Health Information New Partnership to Inform and Educate Tens of Millions of Americans, http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01918.html

FDA Teams with WebMDDecember 3, 2008, http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/FDA_WebMD27389-1.html