Taking A Data-Driven, Patient-Centric Approach To Pharmaceutical Company Communication With Health Care Professionals

This new post by James M. “Mit” Spears appears on the Health Affairs Blog as part of a series stemming from the Fourth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Friday, January 29, 2016.

This post is based in part on a debate which took place between Jerry Avorn and Mit Spears. After reading this piece, check out the counter argument. You can also watch a video of the debate.

The ability of pharmaceutical companies to provide information about medicines to health care professionals beyond that which is contained in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved labeling is a topic that has generated a great deal of discussion, particularly in light of the August 2015 Amarin decision rendered by a US District Court in the Southern District of New York, and the FDA’s recent settlement of the case.

In Amarin, Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that the FDA’s regulation of information provided by pharmaceutical companies violated the First Amendment’s Commercial Speech doctrine to the extent that they prohibited the communication of truthful and non-misleading speech, even where the information provided went beyond the FDA-approved labeling. On March 8, FDA and Amarin settled the case in a way that preserves Amarin’s ability to share truthful, non-misleading information about its medicine. In fact, the FDA even agreed to provide advisory review of two such communications per year with a 60-day timeline.

This case followed on the heels of the Second Circuit’s 2013 decision in Caronia and the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc., in which the Courts affirmed that the First Amendment’s protections of commercial speech extended to pharmaceutical companies and their employees. […]

Read the full post here.

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff

The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.

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