FDA Releases Long-Awaited Social Media Guidances

This post was contributed by @MikeMadarasz The pharmaceutical industry has a reputation of moving at a deliberate pace when it comes to social media.  Fittingly, the FDA proceeded at the same cautious rate in releasing a draft of their social media guidance which was published on Tuesday.  The guidelines were organized into two distinct guidances and on the surface, it appears that they’ll limit the amount of advertising companies can do on social sites with character limitations such as Twitter.  The proposal requires companies to warn about associated risks as well as the benefits that go along with their products.  This could potentially consume valuable characters in mediums where space is limited.  But don’t expect the full laundry list of side-effects that you generally hear at the end of a TV commercial.  As part of posting these warnings, companies should also include a link to more detailed information about the risks.  The second guidance posted by the FDA outlined direction for dealing with third party postings on sites such as Wikipedia.  The guidance states that companies should attempt to correct any misinformation by reaching out to bloggers and other authors, but are not held responsible if information remains unchanged.  In cases where a company or employee is contributing this information, they should follow normal guidelines as promoting a product.  Tom Abrams, head of the FDA’s Office of Pre...
Source: ePharma Summit - Category: Medical Marketing and PR Tags: Draft FDA Guidance ePharma ePharma Summit FDA Guidance and Regulation FDA Guidance for Pharma FDA Social Media pharma marketing Social Media Guidance Social media guidances Source Type: blogs