Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15104

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

Post R.
Prescribing Records and the First Amendment — New Hampshire's Data-Mining Statute
The New England Journal of Medicine 2009 Feb 19; 360:(8):745-747
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/360/8/745?query=TOC

Abstract:

In November 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld against constitutional attack a New Hampshire statute that prohibits data miners from selling information about physicians’ prescribing histories to pharmaceutical companies for use by sales representatives (“detailers”).1 Pharmaceutical companies annually spend billions of dollars on detailing, which entails visiting individual physicians to persuade them to prescribe specific brand-name drugs. A detailer who knows a physician’s prescribing history can effectively tailor his or her promotional message.

Although the statute prohibits data miners from transferring the prescribing history of individual physicians “for any commercial purpose,” including the “marketing, promotion, . . .