Tech Daily Dose reports that the Center for Digital Democracy, headed by Jeff Chester, has submitted a filing (pdf) to the Food and Drug Administration that blasted how these [pharmaceutical] companies advertise online.”

The FDA had requested comments, due this week, on how companies promote FDA-regulated medical products using the Internet, including social media sites. The Internet has “raised questions and concerns over how to apply existing regulations to promotion in these newer media,” according to the FDA’s background on its proceeding. In particular, the Web has created challenges for figuring out how to state mandatory information, such as a drug’s side effects.

Chester’s group pushed beyond these compliance concerns to raise questions about how pharmaceutical companies might use online marketing tools to prey on consumer anxieties. “Few U.S. health consumers are aware that they are being identified, labeled, profiled, and tracked on the Internet while they search or access information on specific conditions or concerns,” CDD’s statement said.

In its filing, CDD also made recommendations for next steps the FDA could take:

The FDA should conduct a thorough investigation and analysis of contemporary Digital Direct Marketing to Consumers of drug and health-related products and information. Online marketing seamlessly blends many different techniques that are designed to influence behavior through a range of related interactive applications, including the story-telling ability of interactive video to foster emotional responses. We urge the FDA to issue a report and recommendations designed to inform both consumers and health professionals of the issues raised by interactive ads for these products and services, including potential adverse effects. Specifically, the FDA should promptly undertake the following:

1. Examine and analyze the data collection and usage practices of pharmaceutical advertisers to assess the extent of consumer information collected through websites, social networks, online video sites, and other interactive means. This should include personal information, IP addresses, cookies, flash cookies, Web bugs, tracking pixels, Web analytic tools, conversational and sentiment analysis, and any other “data-mining” applications. We urge the FDA to resist suggestions that such data collection methods are appropriate because they can help identify risk-averse-related information. The FDA should provide the public with information on what data are collected and how they are used. (For example, what is considered by pharmaceutical marketers to be so-called non-personal information?) As the FDA knows, the FTC is currently in the process of re-evaluating what is considered personal and non-personal information—and it should work closely with that agency.
2. Require companies engaged in digital marketing of health products under its purview to provide information on the kinds of online targeting techniques and methods they utilize, especially behavioral advertising and retargeting. Consumers need to know whether and how they are being tracked and targeted—including via “condition-specific” channels. This should include information on specific targeting and data collection and analysis techniques undertaken by their own or “unbranded” sites, as well as on health-oriented and ad-supported sites, other online advertising networks, and ad exchanges. The FDA should specifically ask whether companies are profiling and targeting consumers based on racial and ethnic data.
3. Conduct its own review of the privacy policy pages on websites and services, including the leading social networks promoting health products under its purview. It should immediately require health marketers to provide adequate information on privacy policies, instead of incomplete or relatively inaccessible content (and work with the FTC to develop new rules for consumer privacy related to health information marketing online).
4. Analyze how health-related social media marketing influences consumer behavior and attitudes on drug use and about medical conditions. The agency should examine social media marketing applications for the health market designed to foster “viral” marketing approaches, including the targeting of specific consumers in order to influence their own network of relationships.
5. Obtain from pharmaceutical companies a list of the keywords used for paid search campaigns. The companies should also be required to inform the FDA of the techniques and applications they may use in so-called organic search to show up prominently in the results. U.S. consumers should be informed by the FDA of the implications of search marketing practices when they are looking for information and advice.
6. Evaluate the role of Web design, including the use of eye-tracking and so-called “A/B” testing for landing pages to influence how consumers react to content on pharmaceutical and health-ad-supported sites and services. The issue of how best to present risk information and other important disclosure information needs to be understood in the context of work by digital marketers on engagement, including design.
7. Investigate the use of so-called “unbranded” sites funded by pharmaceutical companies, in order to assess whether such sites are structured and designed to support the promotion of specific drugs. The agency should also analyze whether the interactive environment created for such sites provides a balanced and honest reflection of the health risks and condition-specific issues.
8. Conduct an inquiry on the use of neuromarketing-related techniques designed to influence or measure subconscious responses.
9. Work with the Federal Trade Commission and other appropriate agencies to develop a set of policies for regulating the use of behavioral targeting, data collection, and other digital techniques in the marketing of drugs and health-related products.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 and is filed under Anonymity, Identification, Medical data, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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