Is that drug ad for me? Peo­ple pay more at­ten­tion to phar­ma DTC for fa­mil­iar con­di­tions, study finds

Drug ads on TV are al­ways telling peo­ple to “ask your doc­tor.” But guess what? Al­most one in five ac­tu­al­ly do bring up a drug they’ve seen in ad­ver­tis­ing dur­ing a med­ical vis­it while one in 10 say they even ask di­rect­ly for the pre­scrip­tion.

That’s ac­cord­ing to a new Deep­In­tent study field­ed as a fol­low-up to an ini­tial deep dive in­to per­cep­tions around phar­ma di­rect-to-con­sumer mar­ket­ing in March. Back then re­searchers at the dig­i­tal health­care mar­ket­ing plat­form found, not sur­pris­ing­ly, peo­ple were see­ing more DTC ad­ver­tis­ing thanks to in­creas­es in dig­i­tal con­sump­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

A lot more in fact. Phar­ma and health­care com­pa­nies’ dig­i­tal ad spend­ing jumped to more than $9.5 bil­lion in 2020, eMar­keter re­ports, and pre­dicts an­oth­er big jump by the end of this year to $11.3 bil­lion, an in­crease of 18%.

Yet at the same time, peo­ple al­so re­port­ed feel­ing less in­formed than ever. While 75% agreed that be­ing in­formed about phar­ma treat­ment op­tions could save lives, more than 30% said they didn’t know enough in­for­ma­tion be­fore they talked to their doc­tors.

One of the goals of Deep­In­tent’s sec­ond study was to fig­ure out what peo­ple are find­ing on­line when they look up a drug and how phar­ma com­pa­nies can bet­ter con­nect the dots be­tween con­sumers and physi­cians.

The num­ber one ap­peal of a drug ad was rel­e­vance. More than half (51%) of the more than 1,200 con­sumers sur­veyed paid more at­ten­tion to drug ads that dis­cuss a health con­di­tion they have, and an­oth­er 33% pay at­ten­tion to ads that talk about a loved one’s con­di­tion. A small­er 15% point­ed to good con­tent as a rea­son they paid at­ten­tion to the ad.

Mar­cel­la Mil­li­et Scior­ra​

“Con­sis­tent with our first re­search, when peo­ple see an ad that’s rel­e­vant to their con­di­tion, they will go on­line and do more re­search about the drug,” Mar­cel­la Mil­li­et Scior­ra​, Deep­In­tent’s se­nior VP of mar­ket­ing said, adding go­ing on­line — and im­por­tant­ly, find­ing the right con­tent, will help peo­ple “have bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed dis­cus­sions with their doc­tor.”

The study al­so took a phar­ma in­dus­try tem­per­a­ture check ask­ing if the pan­dem­ic in­flu­enced opin­ions about it af­ter the rapid Covid-19 vac­cine de­vel­op­ment. An even split said they had a high­er (19%) or low­er (20%) opin­ion of phar­ma, while 47% said their opin­ion didn’t change.

That’s not-so-great news for phar­ma com­pa­nies’ rep­u­ta­tions as they push to build on pub­lic health good­will af­ter the pan­dem­ic.

“COVID be­came such a po­lit­i­cal is­sue, it cloud­ed a lot of the achieve­ments of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try. I’m not sure that’s the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try’s fault, but just the re­al­i­ty we live in to­day,” Scior­ra said.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

FDA ad­vi­sors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for Bio­gen's ALS drug

A panel of outside advisors to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency grant accelerated approval to Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen despite the drug failing the primary goal of its Phase III study, an endorsement that could pave a path forward for the treatment.

By a 9-0 vote, members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee said there was sufficient evidence that tofersen’s effect on a certain protein associated with ALS is reasonably likely to predict a benefit for patients. But panelists stopped short of advocating for a full approval, voting 3-5 against (with one abstention) and largely citing the failed pivotal study.

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Clay Siegall, Morphimmune CEO

Up­dat­ed: Ex-Seagen chief Clay Sie­gall emerges as CEO of pri­vate biotech

Clay Siegall will be back in the CEO seat, taking the helm of a private startup working on targeted cancer therapies.

It’s been almost a year since Siegall resigned from Seagen, the biotech he co-founded and led for more than 20 years, in the wake of domestic violence allegations by his then-wife. His eventual successor, David Epstein, sold the company to Pfizer in a $43 billion deal unveiled last week.

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion de­lays pro­pos­al for ma­jor changes to phar­ma leg­is­la­tion

The European Commission has once again delayed the release of its proposal for an overhaul of the continent’s pharmaceutical legislation.

The release, previously anticipated on March 29, will occur “slightly later” than expected due to the “very busy College agendas of the last few weeks,” a Commission spokesperson told Endpoints News via email.

While the agency hasn’t provided an updated timeline, the spokesperson said the agenda is “always indicative and adoption dates of Commission proposals may change any time, especially when these proposals concern reforms of complex legislations of major importance.”

Chat­G­PT with phar­ma da­ta de­buts for med­ical meet­ings, be­gin­ning with AACR

What do you get when you combine ChatGPT generative AI technology with specific pharma and clinical datasets? A time-saving tool that can answer questions about medical conference abstracts and clinical findings in seconds in one new application from ZoomRx called FermaGPT.

ZoomRx is debuting a public version of its generative AI product specifically for medical conferences beginning this week for the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting that runs April 14-19.

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Take­da and Lund­beck change tac­tics on Trin­tel­lix de­pres­sion cam­paign

In a new TV commercial for Takeda and Lundbeck’s depression medicine Trintellix, the lead actor turns to the camera and admits, “I don’t got this.”

The new direct-to-consumer campaign called “Real Talk” continues the marketers’ ongoing theme to reinforce that depression is “more than just sadness” and includes multiple overlapping symptoms depending on the patient.

The effort is built on patient research that uncovered a key insight that “patients have a difficult time describing their symptoms beyond feeling sad,” a Takeda spokesperson said.

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Six people from around the world come together in Bristol Myers' new film about 'Living' while also facing disease.

Bris­tol My­ers’ ‘Liv­ing’ doc­u­men­tary ties to­geth­er peo­ple man­ag­ing health con­di­tions

People dealing with chronic or serious health conditions still want to live a full life. Bristol Myers Squibb teamed up with storytelling agency Human to showcase the “tenacious desire to live” among different people living with health conditions or diseases through an original documentary film.

Called “Living,” the patients shown in the unscripted film don’t have the same conditions or demographic profiles or even live in the same countries. There are six different people who do have one thing in common, though — they’re dealing with life-altering diseases. Five women and one man with different kinds of cancers, autoimmune diseases, and lung or cardiovascular conditions speak to the camera about their very personal experiences and emotions.

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Alaa Halawa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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Se­cu­ra Bio to keep of­fer­ing blood can­cer drug de­spite neg­a­tive ODAC vote, OS ques­tions

Secura Bio says it has no plans to change the marketing status of its PI3K inhibitor Copiktra (duvelisib), which won full approval in September 2018 as a third-line treatment for relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma. Updated pivotal trial results raised fresh safety questions about that approval, and the FDA’s outside oncology experts last September voted 8-4 against the drug’s benefit-risk profile.