Diabetes Opinion Leaders Paid By Roche-Pharmaceutical Companies-Diabetes Community

Diabetes Opinion Leaders Paid by Roche to Curate Content on New Twitter-based Social Media Site

Diabetes Nest, according to its "About" statement, "is a Twitter-based diabetes network designed to help people discover the best conversations from the most meaningful voices. The Nest was created by Ignite Health and sponsored by Roche Diabetes Care, makers of ACCU-CHEK® products and services."
Ignite Health, an InVentiv Health agency, maintains the site. Fabio Gratton, chief experience officer at Ignite Health, said:
"Few argue that social media has transformed how patients and their caregivers share healthcare information and find support. But the sheer volume of content can be overwhelming. "So we asked ourselves how we could best help the diabetes community find and engage in the most timely, relevant and important conversations. The result is a simple, intuitive, compelling and ultimately self-sustaining diabetes social media community.”Diabetes Nest aggregates, sorts and ranks tweets from a curated list of diabetes experts" (read more here: "Roche Sponsors Diabetes Nest Twitter-Based Social Media Site").All five of those "diabetes experts" are long-time patient bloggers who are "compensated for their time, effort and invaluable guidance." Caretakers include:

• Amy Tenderich (Diabetes Mine blogger)
• Gina Capone ("gina - your diabetes BFF" blogger)
• Kerri Sparling ("six until me" blogger)
• George Simmons (co-host of DSMA Live on BlogTalkRadio)
• Scott K. Johnson (co-host of DSMA Live on BlogTalkRadio and blogger at Scott's Diabetes)

Roche "has no control or influence over the content or frequency of the Caretakers' tweets."
Roche Diabetes Care has long been wining and dining diabetes bloggers at yearly "Roche Social Media Summits" held in nice places like resorts in Orlando, Florida. When I learned of the first summit held in 2010, I blogged that "Some Social Media Patient Opinion Leaders Want to be Paid Pharma Professionals." Diabetes Nest is, to my knowledge, the first such time that bloggers have been paid to be "consumer opinion leaders" in a manner similar to how pharma often pays physicians to be "key opinion leaders."
At a patient panel discussion during a 2010 conference, Allison Blass (Patient Blogger, Diabetes Activist, Lemonade Life), said "You need to pay some one's full time salary," referring to the desire of some pharma companies to interact with patients in online communities. "The only way to sustain growth and involvement in a [online] community," said Allison, "is to have someone who actually does it [manage social media interactions with patients] as their job... to become the person who is known and loved by the community."
Not that there is anything wrong with being compensated for your time, but pharmaceutical companies have to be careful how they provide compensation. In the case of Diabetes Nest, Roche probably supplies an "unrestricted grant," which is supposed to specify that the grantor (Roche) has no control over the content created by the grantee. The "grantee" in this case is probably Ignite Health, which owns Diabetes Nest (see NOTE below). Ignite Health is an advertising agency that works with pharmaceutical companies.
NOTE: Doing some WHOIS snooping, I learn that the domain diabetesnest.com is registered to "TWTCLK" and the administrative contact is Fabio Gratton, both located at the same address in San Clemente, CA. A pharmaceutical company providing unrestricted grants or other funds to an advertising agency in support of a patient site related to a product line is a bit controversial, IMHO, especially if there intends to be a "Chinese" wall between the funding and advertising interests. This kind of thing got pharma companies into trouble with the likes of Senator Grassley when "unrestricted grants" were provided to ad agencies to run independent accredited CME programs for physicians. ACCME, which accredits CME, now requires that CME providers to be independent of ad agencies to avoid conflicts of interest read more..

Pharmaceutical Companies-Research And Development-Pharmaceutical Company-Direct Marketing

How the Placebo Effect "Marketing Can Improve Health "Increase Pharma Profits

Big pharmaceutical companies are drastically cutting back on research and development. The economics just do not support the model that has been the driving force of the drug industry over the past 15 years.
According to a Forbes analysis reported by Matthew Herper, "The average drug developed by a major pharmaceutical company costs at least $4 billion, and it can be as much as $11 billion" (see "The Truly Staggering Cost Of Inventing New Drugs").
Some pundits suggest that lowering the cost of performing clinical trials will help get more drugs to market faster. Andrew von Eschenbach, former FDA Commissioner and now employed as chairman of conservative think tank Manhattan Institute's Project FDA initiative, suggested that instead of the FDA asking pharma companies to complete "laborious clinical trials proving efficacy, after proof of concept and safety testing, the product could be approved for marketing with every eligible patient entered in a registry so the company and the FDA can establish efficacy through post-market studies" (see here).
However, Herper points out that the "main expense is failure. AstraZeneca (AZ) does badly by this measure because it has had so few new drugs hit the market." AZ spent about $59 billion on R&D between 1997 and 2011, but only managed to get 5 new drugs approved. According to simple arithmetic, that means each of these 5 drugs cost about $11.8 billion to develop.
That's an interesting number. A very similar number came up during last night's 60 Minutes segment on "Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect?" (see it here). It turns out that antidepressants sales in the U.S. bring in $11.3 billion a year to pharmaceutical companies that sell them -- including AstraZeneca!
Could it be that the drug industry is merely "breaking even" in the anti-depressant market?
I suspect they are probably making a pretty good profit -- but that profit may be diminishing as more and more anti-depressants go off patent. In fact, it has been suggested that 60 Minutes dared to air this expose -- four years after the research was first published -- because the "news" can no longer harm the drug companies that CBS depends upon for advertising -- most of the drugs mentioned are off patent (see “You’re telling me this now?” Why the news is suddenly critical of statins and antidepressants).
I did a blog post about antidepressants and the placebo effect two years ago in January 2010 (read "A Common Goal of Research and Marketing: Fool the Doctor"). In that post, it was noted that clinical evidence suggests these drugs are not any more effective than a placebo in patients with less severe depression. But drug company marketing to physicians does not mention this. Thus, physicians are led to believe that the drugs ARE effective for all patients with depression.
As pointed out in the 60 Minutes piece, "a clinician who cares, who takes the time, who listens to you, who asks questions about your condition and pays attention to what you say, that's the kind of care that can help facilitate a placebo effect." That goes double if the clinician actually believes what he or she is prescribing is a drug with proven efficacy.
Consequently, marketing to physicians along with direct marketing to consumers can play a huge role in "facilitating" a placebo effect. Which leads me to this idea: pharmaceutical companies should be in the business of developing placebos rather than dangerous, ineffective chemical compounds. There would be no need for expensive clinical trials and it would be easy for FDA to adopt von Eschenbach's idea to approve these new "drugs" before they are proven effective. It will be up to marketing to make them effective by facilitating the placebo effect!
Of course, to be successful, this new approach to drug development must be done surreptitiously and the FDA must conspire with the drug industry (not too much of a stretch there). After all, if everyone kn read more..

Pharmaceutical Companies-Pharmaceutical Industry-Government Programs-340B Program

More Pharma at Government Programs Than Any Other Event

While the recently released Proposed Rule has the pharmaceutical industry scrambling to begin to strategize how it might need to adapt and change post- Final Rule, the AMP guidance is not the only thing the pharmaceutical industry is talking about.
At the Government Programs Summit, industry professionals will be on hand to discuss not only the AMP Rule, but the 340B pricing program, Medicare Part D, Medicaid Managed Care, Medicare Part B, ASP Pricing and State reimbursement. You will walk away with a thorough knowledge of how various pharmaceutical companies are addressing current challenges and questions with each program to take back and implement at your office.
Session Highlights:
? Improve the Integrity of the 340B Program
? Impact on Manufacturer of Multiple Mechanisms for Reimbursement from States
? Strategies to Overcome the Implementation and Process Challenges of Part D
For more information and these sessions, download the brochure here.
The Government Programs Summit this March 14-16, 2012 in Baltimore, MD!  If you have any questions about the program, please feel free to contact Jennifer Pereira at jpereira@iirusa.com. read more..

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing-Pharmaceutical Companies-President Barack Obama-Republican Candidates

Lobbying by Pharmaceutical Manufacturing | OpenSecrets

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Pharmaceutical companies, which develop both over-the-counter and prescription drugs, have been among the biggest political spenders for years. While the industry has traditionally supported Republican candidates, some key players have recently increased donations to Democratic candidates as the GOP’s power in Washington erodes. The pharmaceutical manufacturing industry will likely fair better this decade now that President Barack Obama’s initial plan to institute a public health insurance did not become a part of sweeping health care reform legislation signed into law in 2010. A government-run plan, because of its size, would have had considerable negotiating power to draw down drug prices. [Read more Background]

Top Contributors, 2011-2012

ContributorAmountPfizer Inc $702,391Amgen Inc $574,648AstraZeneca PLC $527,501Abbott Laboratories $406,773Merck & Co $363,041GlaxoSmithKline $325,741Eli Lilly & Co $264,762Novartis AG $205,209Bayer Corp $124,650Endo Pharmaceuticals $116,400Perrigo Co $111,475Mutual Pharmaceutical $105,000Allergan Inc $88,000Teva Pharmaceuticals USA $86,870Sanofi-Aventis $78,300Bristol-Myers Squibb $70,050Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America $65,450Nostrum Pharmaceuticals $62,300Cephalon Inc $61,250Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America $61,250...view more Contributors

Contribution Trends, 1990-2010

...view Totals

Lobbying Totals, 1998-2010

...view more Lobbying

Party Split, 1990-2010

Top Recipients, 2011-2012

CandidateOfficeAmountObama, Barack (D) $129,139Romney, Mitt (R) $89,300Upton, Fred (R-MI)House $77,575Brown, Scott P (R-MA)Senate $76,483Hatch, Orrin G (R-UT)Senate $69,400...view more Recipients

Average Contributions to Members of Congress, 1990-2010

...view more Money to Congress Data for the current election cycle were released by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, February 13, 2012 Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. via opensecrets.org Posted via email from Jack's posterous read more..