A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post about the impact of Web 2.0 platforms on health care and Big Pharma. One of the issues I addressed was the influence of Big Pharma on the medical profession through what is euphemistically called “doctor detailing”.
In plain language, it’s a multi-billion-dollar Big Pharma marketing strategy to influence doctors by offering them all manner of freebies — from free dinners and sports tickets to baubles and trinkets like pens and coffee mugs. In the old days, these “good will” practices frequently included free holidays for doctors and their families to exotic places like Hawaii, usually under the pretext of attending a “conference” about health care. Critics claimed the doctor-detailing ritual, though justified as a way of “informing” doctors about new drugs, was in fact an elaborate Big Pharma racket to induce them to prescribe their branded drugs to patients.
It seems the Big Pharma boondoggle is over. As this article in the International Herald Tribune reports, the Big Pharma companies have agreed to a new code, effective January 1st, that bars them from lubricating their business relations with doctors with things like Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, and Lipitor mugs. The code appears to be “voluntary” however, in other words without enforcement teeth. Also, some claim there are loopholes allowing the moveable feast of lavish lunching to continue.
Leaving that ethical debate aside, these new Big Pharma guidelines are perhaps a sign that, with their profits going south and blockbuster patents expiring soon, the big drug makers realise that they have to start rethinking their business model. Spending billions on armies of marketing reps tasked with gently persuading doctors to prescribe their drugs seems antiquated in the Web 2.0 world. Big Pharma companies like Pfizer are now opting to reach doctors more directly — and cost-efficiently — by buying front-row seats in their professional social networking sites, like Sermo. That raises other ethical questions, which I won’t address here. My point is that Big Pharma companies clearly have decided to adopt new marketing strategies.
The freebie culture in many professions is a taboo subject because it’s embarrassing. Big Pharma can be credited, even if they are making a virtue of necessity, with bringing it out in the open and dealing with it in a transparent manner. My former business, newspaper journalism, is another beleagured industry that has long been feeding off a freebie culture despite its murky ethical implications. In some areas of journalism (fashion, travel, entertainment), the non-stop extravaganza of inducements is alarming. The pervasive freebie culture is a dirty secret that journalists never admit openly, but privately acknowledge — especially when on the right side of a large drink.
If it’s legitimate to question, and condemn, the big-bonus culture that led to the collapse of the winner-take-all financial industries with devastating impact, surely it’s equally legitimate to question the freebie culture that pervades so many professions.
What we are witnessing, I believe, is a massive restructuing of industries whose business models are being transformed. And it is now producing an impact on behavioural issues like ethical conduct. Watch for more of these convulsions as the Web 2.0 revolution sweeps through other professions, imposing new forms of transparency on old methods based on opacity.
