Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20076

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: Magazine

Fleming K
Relief from GP software
Medical Observer 2005 July 157

Full text:

Pressure on the GP prescribing software industry to minimise pharmaceutical advertising has reaped rewards, with the market’s biggest player assuring changes to its drug advertising.

In a letter to GPs, Primary Health Care managing director Dr Edmund Bateman said work was in progress to change the format and timing of ads following the release of Medical Director 3 next month.

Health Communication Network (HCN), which owns Medical Director, was purchased earlier this year by Primary – led by Dr Bateman.

However, GPs should not expect pharmaceutical ads to disappear from software altogether. Dr Bateman said changes could minimise interference in GP consultations and still be effective for advertisers.

The assurance came as e-health firm IBA launched a new company – Nxthealth – and ad-free software it hopes will break Medical Director’s dominance of the prescribing software market.

IBA CEO Steve Garrington said it was good if Nxthealth was forcing change as a result of competition in the market.

On-screen pharmaceutical advertising had been labelled “inappropriate and intrusive” by the Australian Consumer’ Association and was the subject of a complaint to Medicines Australia by public health expert Dr Ken Harvey.

In the letter Dr Bateman took the opportunity to speak out for the first time over the backlash after Medical Director was used by some GPs to provide de-identified patient data to research firm CAMM Pacific for financial reward.

The federal privacy commissioner cleared both companies of breaching the law because the data was de-identified.

However, federal health minister Tony Abbott chastised participating GPs for “making money by giving away their patients’ secrets”.

Dr Bateman wrote in his letter to GPs that HCN had been commended for taking privacy seriously.

There was no suggestion the company provided confidential records, nor that it would, and he said any suggestions to the contrary were “offensive”.