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Prescription Data Mining and the Protection of Patients' Interests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

David Orentlicher
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Extract

Pharmaceutical companies have long relied on direct marketing of their drugs to physicians through one-on-one meetings with sales representatives. This practice of “detailing” is substantial in its costs and its number of participants. Every year, pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on millions of visits to physicians by tens of thousands of sales representatives.

Critics have argued that drug detailing results in sub-optimal prescribing decisions by physicians, compromising patient health and driving up spending on medical care. In this view, physicians often are unduly influenced both by marketing presentations that do not accurately reflect evidence from the medical literature and by the gifts that sales representatives deliver in conjunction with their presentations.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 74 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2010

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References

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