How to design patient services with social media within the ABPI code guidelines
In this blog, Senior Consultant Craig Moore, from the Blue Latitude Strategy team, discusses the application of the ABPI Code, including incorporating social media into digital patient services.
In the UK, the marketing of
prescription medicine to health professionals and patients is carried out under
strict regulatory oversight to protect and support high quality patient care. The ABPI Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry is
administered by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, and is a
self-regulatory code that applies to the marketing of prescription medicines
both to health professionals and the public as a whole. When designing digital services and
informational materials for prescription drugs or services, there are unique
considerations that must be taken around how that information is accessed and
used. In this blog, Senior Consultant Craig Moore, from the Blue
Latitude Strategy team, discusses the application of the ABPI Code,
including incorporating social media into digital patient services. Do some market researchto understand the
customer needs: would patients be interested in the social media
functionality; would they use it? Rounds of user research and user testing
would highlight if this was important or not.
At Blue Latitude, the aim is to solve
problems for clients following a number of solution design methodologies.
Host a PMCPA (Prescription Medicines Code of
Practice Authority)training session and take the
opportunity to get feedback on early solution concepts. Understand where other
companies have breached the code and where you may run the risk with your
own solutions. The PMCPA’s view is absolute; any company working with or
providing services for the Pharma Industry needs to know the code. (Blue
Latitude’s staff have all completed the introductory PMCPA training session). Get cross-functional teams around a
meeting table to highlight social media in the
organisation. The corporate communication team handles social throughout most
organisations. Silos mean that the information is not always shared. The
development of the website/app should not be the main focus; the main focus
should be to capture any company-wide issues or concerns about using social,
and highlight areas of the code that are designed to support this. Take any objections
away and incorporate them into the business case for the solution. Consider the level of patient access in the kind of website/app you want to
develop. Patient access will raise some red flags, especially from the
pharma-covigilance teams. The fear would be that an increased perception
of patients discussing product-related issues would lead to an inundation of
Adverse Events or Product Complaints (AE/PC). Initiate some monitoring pilots
related to the therapy area in general.
This will help establish a reporting process; defining clear roles and
responsibilities as well as outlining clear project plans, objectives, and exit
strategies. Always follow the guidelines, and go beyond them.
For example, use what you report (or
consider to be) an AE/PC as a metric to demonstrate that social listening will
not create an undue burden on internal resources. Once the process is
established, expand monitoring into competitor products – there is no need to
report AE/PC for competitors – then, move on to company-owned products.
Look at the possibility of developing
a solution for closed patient communities.
The code explains how use of social media to discuss prescription medicines
(for example, on Twitter) is seen as promotional. With closed patient
communities, the challenge to the code/internal MLR compliance teams is to make
sure to only allow access to prescribed patients. Canada, for example, uses
product identification numbers and DIN to allow access to a patient programme
or forum.
If you’d like to discuss digital
solutions for patient communities or how the ABPI Code impacts digital services
in more depth, we’d love to hear from you - Get in touch! To
read more about regulations which impact marketing for Pharma, read our blog from guest poster Aurelie Pols on data security and privacy.
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