Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7049
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Journal Article
Tuffs A.
Sponsorship of patients' groups by drug companies should be made transparent.
BMJ 2006 Dec 16; 333:(7581):1238
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7581/1238-d
Abstract:
Drug companies are sponsoring more and more groups for patients in Germany to increase demand for their products, but many members remain unaware of their involvement, a study has found.
The firms are also advertising their products on what seem to be independent websites, despite laws that ban advertising prescription medicines to the public.
The study, by the Zentrum für Sozialpolitik of Bremen University, was commissioned by Germany’s state health insurance companies and focused on the funding of groups for patients with chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and eczema.
At present, health insurance companies are the main sponsor of patients’ groups, spending a total 28m (£19m; $37m) in 2005, but drug companies are increasingly moving into the area.
A quarter of patients’ groups derive about a fifth of their income from pharmaceutical firms; another 5% derive as much as half from that source. All German patients’ groups receive state money (12.1m in total in 2005), as well as money from pension funds, charities, and personal donations.
Currently, there are about 300 national support groups for patients with chronic disease or disabilities, about 800 groups and 270 contact offices within the 16 federal states, and about 70 000 regional groups. About three million patients and relatives are thought to be members of patients’ support groups, and many groups have representatives on national committees on health policy and funding.
“Pharmaceutical firms have recognized that patient groups have a large influence,” said Kirsten Schubert, joint author of the study with Gerd Glaeske. Industry is trying to expand the use of their drugs by such methods as:
Advertising products for off-label use at conferences and in publications
Increasing public awareness of symptoms and diseases
Using patients’ addresses provided by support groups
Founding, counselling, and leading patient groups
Starting websites and involving themselves in internet forums for patients
Organising activities for patients
Using famous people, such as popular athletes, in their advertising.
“Members are often not aware of the involvement of the pharmaceutical industry in their group or organisation,” said Dr Schubert. Pharmaceutical companies are more likely to sponsor national groups rather than the regional ones, which are often poorly funded, she added.
The authors of the study recommend that all sponsorship be made transparent. An independent taskforce should monitor sponsorship, and good monitoring practice should be made a prerequisite for public funding.
An increasing number of health experts have also pointed out that pharmaceutical firms are targeting not just patient groups, but individual patients themselves and their relatives. Marketing strategies focus on seemingly independent websites that are designed to create demands for certain products, despite the fact that the advertising of prescription drugs direct to the public is illegal in Germany.
“There is not that much difference between the way prescription and non-prescription products are being presented on the internet by manufacturers,” said Hilda Bastian, the head of the health information department at the Institute for Quality and Economic Efficiency in Health Care, the German equivalent of the English National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
“The line between information and promotion has become completely blurry,” she said.
On its website, the institute has started to offer independent evidence based health information (www.informedhealthonline.org).
As an advocate for independent information for patients she also expressed concern about recent proposals at the European Union, prompted by pressure from firms and patient organisations, to allow pharmaceutical manufacturers to extend their marketing activity into what are known as “public private partnerships” (www.euractiv.net/de/gesundheit/informierte-patient/article-156880).
German supporters of this idea have pointed out that currently patients in Germany and other European states are at a disadvantage if they have no knowledge of English and therefore have no access to information about products on US websites.
