Canadians, FaceBook and Healthcare

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Pfizer Canada shares its social media response flow chart

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Is PAAB Doing a Good Job in Educating us on Social Media Regs in Canada?

Several months ago, the PAAB (Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board) held 3 social media marketing sessions called “Social Media Marketing in Pharma: What Works in Canada”, twice in Toronto and once in Montreal, where they provided some of their insights on Canadian regulations regarding pharmaceutical social media marketing.  This meeting even had a representative from Health Canada as a panel member.

Then earlier this month, they presented even more guidance at the Eye For Pharma eMarketing Canada conference.  Just yesterday, they made their slides from the conference available on the PAAB website: PAAB Guidance on Social Media Marketing (61 slides). Enable audio on your computer as each slide has audio. The audio track on each slide is by Patrick Massad (Chief Review Officer at the PAAB).  Beware – the file is huge.  It slowed my computer down for several minutes.  But once you go through the slides and audio, you will find that it is full of valuable information, some of which was not presented at the recent eMarketing conference due to lack of time.

The PAAB has also made itself more available to the Canadian pharma community by setting up a LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter profile.  The PAAB has been using these avenues to not only update the industry on PAAB activities, but also to share information about social media from other countries.  On Twitter, the PAAB even posted a request for people to join one of their social networs and to start a discussion.

As far as I know, the level of outreach by the PAAB to the pharma industry with regards to guidance on the regulations that impact social media marketing is the first of its kind worldwide.  Please correct me if this is inaccurate.  I am aware of the FDA meetings held a while back, but so far, no guidance has been made available since those meetings.

Whether we like the regulations or not, and whether we feel the regulations are doing justice to the mantra of social media being open for engagement by all stakeholders, we have to give credit to the PAAB for their efforts in helping the Canadian pharma industry understand what we can and cannot do within the legal framework.  I am not a fan of the current Rx DTC regulations in Canada.  They are outdated, and I would like to see these regulations re-visited and modified.  But I don’t blame the PAAB for those regulations.  They did not make the rules.  They just help us work within them.

The only recommendation that I would have for the PAAB (and Rx&D as well for that matter), is to include something about social media guidelines as part of their overall set of guidelines.  Perhaps that is in the works and I am just not aware.

Do you think the PAAB is doing a good job in educating the Canadian pharmaceutical industry on how to apply current regulations to social media campaigns?  Do you have any suggestions for them to improve their outreach to the industry?

Disclaimer:  I have been involved with the PAAB on various social media activities, but this post is my personal opinion.  The PAAB has not had any input or influence in the content of this article.

Stay in touch,
Natalie

Connect with me on the following networks:
FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn

PAAB Offers Guidance on Regulatory Social Media Thought Process

Eye for Pharma organized the 1st eMarketing Canada conference, which was held in Toronto, on November 1-2 2010.

Patrick Massad (Chief Review Officer at the PAAB, Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board) presented an algorithm to facilitate the regulatory thought process when planning a social media promotional activity.  Here is the suggested algorithm:

1) Is this advertising?

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2) Who is the intended audience?

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3) What restrictions should I consider for this audience with respect to disease and product schedules?

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4) What mechanism will I use to limit access to that audience?

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5) What is the sponsor’s tolerance for uncertainty & risk?

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6) How will I align the site with this tolerance level?

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7) What are the regulatory consequences of adding and/or linking other tools/content to my site?

 

Here are some highlights of Patrick’s presentation with regards to the very 1st step to detemine if tactic in mind is advertising or not:

Health Canada’s definition of advertising is as follows:  “any representation by any means whatever for the purpose of promoting directly or indirectly the sale or disposal of any food, drug, cosmetic or device” (as per section 2 of Food Drugs Act).

If this does not help to answer the question about whether the promotion is advertising or not, you can then refer to Health Canada’s policy document “The Distinction Between Advertising and Other Activities”, which lists the following 7 questions:

•What is the context in which the message is disseminated?

•Who are the primary and secondary audiences?

•Who delivers the message (the provider)?

•Who sponsors the message and how?

•What influence does the drug manufacturer have on the message content?

•What is the content of the message?

•With what frequency is the message delivered?

By answering these questions, the intent of the promotion becomes clearer as to whether the tactic is advertising or informational.

The intented audience and type of drug will determine which regulatory body needs to be consulted.  See this article here if you need assistance to determine which Canadian regulatory body to consult for your promotional campaign.

For more information about PAAB guidelines regarding social media, see Highlights from “Social Media Marketing in Pharma: What Works in Canada”

What do you think of this algorithm?  Would you add, delete or change any of the suggested steps?  Please leave a comment below.

Stay in touch,
Natalie

Connect with me on the following networks:
FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Social Media Used by Pharmacy to Respond to Criticism

Last week, I posted about Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix’ latest promotion, where consumers who purchased a certain value of goods at the drugstore would receive a free gift certificate for McDonald’s fast food restaurant.  I have no issue with the individual organizations themselves.  However, in my opinion, it is inappropriate for a healthcare-focused organization to be promoting fast food.

Objective of this follow-up post:  I wanted to see if other Canadian consumers had used social media to voice their opinion about the promotion, and if so, how did Shoppers Drug Mart respond to the online chatter.

It turns out that other people also wrote online criticisms about the Shoppers-McDonald’s promotion, but many more people actually spoke about the giveaway in either a neutral or positive tone.  According to socialmention* (a free online tool that monitors and analyzes social media mentions), the sentiment ratio for mentions that include all keywords “shoppers”, “drugmart” and “mcdonald’s” (from October 10 to October 16 2010) was generally more positive than negative.

The largest clump of negative mentions seemed to be on the Shoppers Drug Mart FaceBook page,.  These were posted as comments to Shoppers Drug Mart’s announcement of the giveaway:

Here is what Shoppers Drug Mart did so far to counteract the negative comments:

Shoppers Drug Mart used their FaceBook page to address the negative feedback.  Their statement suggests that this promotion may not be right for everybody, but at no point do they hint at the fact that they made an error in judgement when they agreed to this fast food promotion.

Shoppers Drug Mart is committed to delivering value through our promotional events, so we’ve partnered with Canada’s top businesses to provide you with a range of offers. Your comments help us better understand what you value. The McDonald’s gift card promotion may not be the right fit for you, but we hope you’ll conti…nue to tell us what you want (or don’t want), so we can give you what you need in the future.

As of October 17th mid afternoon, there were 36 ‘likes’ and 37 comments to the above statement, most of which consisted of followers providing promotional ideas for future campaigns:

It appears as though Shoppers Drug Mart was using their FaceBook page as their main platform to respond to the critiques.  They are even redirecting people within other networks onto their FaceBook fan page.  I noticed this when they responded to my Twitter post about my dislike of their current campaign by redirecting me to their FaceBook page.  Since there is no URL for the post itself, but rather for the entire page, I had to scroll down until I found their statement.  As new posts are added to the wall, this statement will disappear under “older posts’.

Here are a few benefits of using FaceBook as the platform to respond to negative mentions:

1) you can quickly respond to the critiques and existing fans will have access to this information quickly,

2) you can easily engage your followers and get them to provide their insights, and

3) the statement will quickly disappear as it scrolls down, thus will rarely be seen unless somebody looks at older posts.

There is a downside though.  If somebody who critiques the campaign was not a member of FaceBook, they would  have difficulty accessing the organization’s response.  But considering there are over 16 million Canadians on FaceBook, I think this is  a reasonable platform to reach a Canadian audience.  I would suggest that Shoppers Drug Mart also post their statement as a comment below the ‘giveaway announcement’ post which contains all the negative mentions.  That way, everybody who wrote a negative mention would be notified that Shoppers had indeed responded to the issue.

My personal opinion is that this was a very bad marketing idea which got lucky because it did not get the public backlash that I expected it would get.  Considering the fact that the online mood was mostly neutral/positive, I don’t blame the PR folks for writing a ‘light’ response to the issue.  I do give them credit though for addressing the issue, and for asking the public for input for future campaigns.  Now hopefully they will listen to the feedback.

Do you believe that Shoppers Drug Mart did a good job in responding to their upset clients?  Tell us if you would have done anything differently:

Do Canadians talk about healthcare online? Do you want to join the conversation? Check out #hcsmca

If you are on Twitter, you know that hashtags have a powerful way of uniting people with common interests.  For months now, I have been following and participating in discussions with the hashtags #hcsm and #hcsmeu.  I even subscribe to their paper.li daily e-newsletters here and here.

But now, we have our very own Canadian healthcare social media hashtag, #hcsmca, thanks to the initiative by Colleen Young, who is also known as @sharingstrength on Twitter. Colleen manages Sharing Strength, a Canadian online resource and community for women with breast cancer.  She describes herself as a “plain language writer and e-patient advocate”.

Yesterday marked the very first #hcsmca Twitter chat.  Although I was only able to attend the first few minutes of the session (such is the life of a work-at-home Mom with a teething baby and active preschooler), I took the time afterwards to review the tweets that were posted as part of this Twitter chat.  From what I saw, there was a diverse mix of participants; e-patients, healthcare providers, non-profit organizations, health 2.0 enthusiasts and consultants and others.  In fact, there were a total of 75 tweeps who used the hashtag #hcsmca yesterday.  That is  very impressive for a first time event.  You can see the transcript of today’s discussion on Twitter here.  The discussions included introductions of participants, questions about how to use Twitter more effectively, exchange of ideas of how to manage social media for one’s own organization, and more.

Here is the link for the daily #hcsmca e-newsletter.  This will include articles that people on Twitter have posted along with the #hcsmca hashtag.  These posts are not all necessarily related to the #hcsmca Twitter chats, but rather articles that people thought other Canadian healthcare social media enthusiasts might find valuable.

Not on Twitter? Well, I would like to convince you to join Twitter because it is such an effective tool for meeting and talking with people with common  interests, but that is an entirely separate dicussion (but if you want to ask me questions about why and how to use Twitter, send me a note – I’m a big fan of this network).   You can view the discussions happening on Twitter that are related to #hcsmca.  Just check out the links I posted above.  They are available to anybody who uses the Internet.  The only thing is that you won’t be able to participate in the discussion, you’ll just be a listener.  Maybe once you see the quality of some of the discussions, you’ll see the benefit of joining Twitter (again, feel free to send me a note and I would be happy to help).  It also looks as though Colleen will set up a FaceBook page as well as a LinkedIn group, so you will be able to join in the discussion on those networks if you are a member there.  Once I get the links to the new FaceBook page and LinkedIn group, I will share them with you.

UPDATE: FaceBook page and LinkedIn group are now live. Join us!

Congratulations to Colleen for starting a great initiative which will allow Canadians with an interest in healthcare to connect and exchange ideas on the topic.  And who knows, maybe we can help improve Canadian healthcare one tweet at a time.

Do you talk about healthcare topics online?  If so, what do you get out of these discussions?  If not, is there something holding you back?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Pharma / Healthcare eMarketing Survey: Results Will be Shared

Please help Essential Research with their Healthcare eMarketing survey.

The survey is focused on Pharma, Biotech and Medical Device companies and their eMarketing to healthcare professionals.  The study seeks to get a high level view of overall resource allocation, dimensions of spending as well as adoption attitudes.

The objective of this survey is to generate a baseline understanding of Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and Agency perceptions and attitudes towards eMarketing to physicians and other healthcare professionals within the Canadian Pharmaceutical industry. Individuals with an interest in this industry are encouraged to participate. Full results will be available at the Eye for Pharma Conference – eMarketing Canada November 1st and 2nd in Toronto - and will be posted online at www.essentialresearch.ca.

Results will be reported in aggregate for analysis purposes. These results will be based on healthcare industry sector (e.g. Pharmaceutical manufacturer or agency). Given this, no one individual or company can or will be identified as an outcome of the analysis.

As a thank you for participating in this survey, Essential Research will be having a draw for five $25 gift cards from Starbucks .  It is your choice to opt-in or out of this draw. The survey takes no longer than 10 minutes.

The survey will be active until approximately the 3^rd week of October.

Big Canadian Pharma Hoping to Make Video go ‘Viral’

Many Canadian companies donate to charitable organizations.  They write a cheque, have a press release with a photo of key people from both organizations holding a mega-sized cheque, and oftentimes the promotion fizzles from that point on.

Pfizer Canada Inc. is taking a unique approach in ensuring that its sponsorship of Canada’s Paralympics Team gets noticed by Canadians, all while promoting their MoreThanMedication.ca website.  Last week, Pfizer Canada posted a video honouring Canada’s Paralympics Team on their MoreThanMedication.ca website, which features the strength and passion of Team Canada sledge hockey player Todd Nicholson.

The objective is to make the video go ‘viral’ and get viewed by as many Canadians as possible in order to raise awareness about the Paralympics taking place in Vancouver, and the determination and passion of the Paralympics athletes.  Viewers of the video are encouraged to share it with their friends and networks either via FaceBook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, or even by e-mail.  Everytime they do so, Pfizer donates $5.00 (Cdn) to the Canadian Paralympics Team, up to a maximum of $50,000 (Cdn).

Here is the statement that automatically appeared on my Twitter and FaceBook accounts when I clicked on the share button.  Notice that there is no mention of Pfizer or of the $5 donation.  Personally, I believe a mention of the donation by Pfizer would have peaked more people’s interest and would have increased the number of views;

I also saved the video on Delicious and gave it the thumbs up on Digg, but so far it appears that only two people have done so on these particular networks.

In order to reach its goal of $50,000, the video needs to be shared 10,000 times.   By early Monday morning, March 14th, approximately an entire week after having launched the video, the digital counter on the MoreThanMedication.ca website showed that Pfizer had raised a total of $20,400 via the sharing of the video so far, which equates to 4,080 views.

Note that this is the number of views, not the number of unique viewers.  For example, I shared the video via all 5 methods that were made available (Twitter, FaceBook, Delicious, Digg and e-mail), which counts as 5 views.  But one also needs to consider that it is possible that more people viewed the video and shared it and that these ‘shares’ did not get counted for the donation. For example, if somebody shared the video by retweeting or copying and pasting the statement into their profiles without going directly through the MoreThanMedication.ca website, these ‘shares’ would not be counted.  This is because Pfizer is monitoring the number of ‘shares’ via their internal web analytics.

Although the campaign is meant to raise awareness within the Canadian population, viewers from other countries are not prevented from sharing the video and contributing to the donation per view.

After the campaign is completed, it would be interesting to get a breakdown of the percentage of viewers who shared the video link via e-mail, FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and Delicious.  My guess is that e-mail and FaceBook will be the two predominant methods of sharing of the video.  Here are some statistics to support my rationale;

1) Despite the fact that the share of Canadian Internet visits surpassed e-mail in April 2009 (HitWise, May 2009, chart below), e-mail is still ranked in 4th position.

2) The most popular social network with Canadians is FaceBook.  Canadians have low awareness of Digg and Delicious, and appear to minimally use these social bookmarking networks (CNW Group and Leger Marketing, Social Media Reality Check, April 2009, chart below).

What about YouTube?

So far, I have been unsuccessful in finding the Paralympics video by Pfizer on YouTube.  It would have been interesting to see how many views the video could have had via YouTube, especially considering that YouTube is the 2nd most used social network by Canadians according to the CNW Group and Leger Marketing study.  My gut tells me that this medium was intentionally not included because Pfizer Canada wants Canadians to visit the MoreThanMedication.ca website, and posting the video on YouTube may have diluted this particular objective.  However, I do believe that the video would have more viral ability if it were made available on a Pfizer Canada channel on YouTube.  What are your thoughts on this?

A purely Canadian initiative:

Pfizer Canada’s MoreThanMedication.ca website is a purely Canadian campaign, as is the video honouring Canada’s Paralympics Team.

Canadian regulatory guidelines:

The campaign appears to be fully within the Canadian regulatory guidelines as there do not appear to be any product mentions on either the website or the videos.

Pfizer Canada has tested social media before:

Some of you may recall that Pfizer tested the social media environment last year with their “Be Brave” campaign.  This was another campaign devised to raise funds for another charitable organization, Starlight Children’s Foundation.  The only sharing option at the time appears to have been e-mail. According to the information that I found on their MoreThanMedication.ca website, it appears as though they reached their objective of raising $50,000 via the sharing of this particular video.

Search “Be Brave Pfizer” in YouTube, and you will find that the “Be Brave” video that was posted on the CNW Group channel garned 22,230 views over the past year, which ranks it as the 2nd most watched YouTube video on the CNW Group channel.

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Many thanks to Veronica Piacek, Director Consumer Communications & Relations at Pfizer Canada, for taking the time to share her insights with me regarding this Pfizer social media campaign.

Congratulations to the Pfizer Canada team, and their suppliers who have assisted them with the video in honour of the Canadian Paralympics Team;  Klick Communications (morethanmedication.ca website), Zig Toronto (video creation) and Strategic Objectives (PR agency).  And most of all, best wishes in making the Canada’s Paralympics Team video a viral success and raising $50,000.

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What do you think of this Canadian pharma social media example?  What would you do the same, what would you do differently?  There is no judgement here, it is just a discussion so that we can learn from one another.

Stay in touch,
Natalie

Connect with me on the following networks:
FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn

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Do Canadian patients trust others like them?

Next week, I will be posting a blog series on Canadian healthcare social networks; 1 network reviewed per day! These are online communities where Canadian patients (and sometimes patients from other countries as well), share healthcare-related, and sometimes very personal information with one another.

As such, I was interested in learning more about how Canadian patients who connect with one another on online communities trust the information that they are receiving from one another. My immediate thought was to connect with the Edelman group.

If you have ever talked with somebody who either had been diagnosed with a similar disease or was taking a similar treatment as you, did you trust the information that you were given by that person? Chances are pretty good that you would have trusted the information given by that person, but not as much as in previous years.

The 2008, 2009 and 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer reports confirm this.  Trust in a “person like yourself” has decreased from 2008 to 2009 (as have most information sources listed in the report), and dropped again in 2010. From the global 2010 Edelman report, 44% of respondents aged between 25-64 years said they would find the information from a person like them to be either ‘very credible’ or ‘extremely credible’ (down from 47% in 2009, and 58% in 2008).  That’s a huge drop over the past 3 years!

Edelman 2010 Trust Barometer

Interestingly, the “person like yourself” is the only group that actually decreased in trust from 2009 to 2010. All other information sources either increased in trust or remained the same.  It makes you wonder what happened to make us lose so much trust in people similar to ourselves.  Unfortunately, the Edelman report does not give an answer to this question.  They do provide insight though, regarding the increase in trust in the other groups;

“In a volatile year, it seems that informed publics value guidance from credentialed experts over a “person like me,” which lost ground as a credible voice of information for a company (figure 8). This desire for substantial information points to why academics and experts, and financial or industry analysts are the most trusted spokespeople for a company.”

But do these global statistics reflect Canadian trust?

The Edelman reports provide global and some country data, but do not break down any Canadian data. The Edelman group in Toronto agreed to dig up the Canadian information for me.  However, at the time of publishing this post, the 2010 Edelman Trust report had just been released a few days prior, and the Canadian data was not yet available.  It should become available within the next 2 months, and the Edelman group in Toronto has promised to send me some Canadian statistics as soon as possible (yup, I`ll be posting that info for you as soon as I get it).

But in the meantime, the Edelman group in Toronto was kind enough to send me some Canadian statistics from the 2009 report;

In 2009, the global trust in a “person like yourself” was 47%, whereas the Canadian trust in a “person like yourself” was 49%.  OK, so Canadians scored a bit higher, but not by much.  It will be interesting to see what the 2010 report shows, particularly whether the Canadian score will have increased or decreased, or stayed the same over time.

Another point to keep in mind is that a “person like yourself” is not the same as a “patient like yourself”. The Edelman report does not specifically discuss trust in health issues from a “person like yourself”.  Talking about sports gear with another sports fanatic is very different than talking about your cancer treatments with another patient.  Medical information can be so technical, yet healthcare can be a very personal and emotional topic for patients.  Who knows!  Perhaps patients with newly diagnosed diseases or prescriptions might have greater, or perhaps much less trust in another “patient like yourself”.

Can we answer the question whether Canadian patients trust others like them?  Not entirely, at least not from this report.  I think we can infer from the 2009 data that there definitely would be some level of trust.  But to what level would we trust other Canadian patients, and how would this compare with other information sources?  Those questions remain unanswered, at least from this particular report.

Another study by Essential Research Inc., Essential Healthconsumer, which was implemented in 2008 and published in 2009, suggests that more than half (57%) of Canadian healthcare consumers have greater trust in Canadian sites, whereas 36% trust all (Canadian, American, International) sites equally.  However, only 14% of Canadian healthcare consumers who found healthcare information online actually shared it with others online.  So it appears that having a Canadian online community might enhance the trust of its members.

The 14% of Canadians willing to share their findings seems a bit low when compared to the Social Technographics Profile tool, which suggests that 18% of Canadian adults are ‘creators’ and that 29% are ‘critics’ (ie. participate in online forums) on social media.  You can learn more about the Social Technographics Profile here.

I have two theories as to why this might be, but they remain untested opinions, so take it with a grain of salt;

1) This could be a result of the difference in timing of the two studies.  The Essential HealthConsumer data was gathered in November / December 2008, whereas the Social Technographics Profile tool includes 2009 data.  Social media is evolving quickly, therefore the time difference in collecting the data for both studies could be the reason for the discrepancy as more and more people are becoming familiar and comfortable in using social media.

2) Moreover, similarly to the earlier argument that a ‘person like yourself’ is different than a ‘patient like yourself’, the Essential Research data is related to sharing of healthcare information online, whereas the Social Technographics Profile is related to general postings and comments made on social media.  Healthcare is very personal and can be emotional, therefore one might expect to see fewer Canadians willing to share such sensitive information online with others.  But that very same person might be quite comfortable in sharing information about the new pair of shoes that he or she just bought for a bargain.

And finally, the type of disease state involved might influence whether Canadian patients trust other patients like them enough to share information with them online. Although not Canadian-specific and not trust-specific, the North American Technographics Benchmark Survey of 2008 (Source: Forrester Inc. Research;  blogs.forrester.com ─ April 22, 2009) suggests certain disease states that participate the most, and might benefit the most from online communities (see top right quadrant on chart below).

The upcoming Canadian healthcare social network blog series might provide some qualitative information about how much Canadian patients trust others like them. You will notice that the level of member activity on these online communities varies.  As you review these various online communities next week, keep in mind the type of disease state involved, the age of the typical members, the various features that facilitate the online discussions, and the sophistication of the management of the networks (most of the networks to be featured are managed by non-profit medical organizations who are juggling funding and personnel with multiple organizational objectives).  This might help us better understand why some medical online communities seem to be more effective than others.  Hopefully the series will stimulate some thought and discussion, and maybe even motivate some strategic partnerships.

Let us know your thoughts on whether Canadian patients trust others like them  by writing a comment.

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A big thank you to the Edelman group in Toronto for their speedy responses and feedback.  I was truly amazed at their level of customer service.  (Thanks to Scott Evans and Lisa Kimmel for all your help!)

As well, many thanks to Essential Research Inc. for giving me permission to share some of their insightful Canadian data.  (Thanks to Don Lajoie for his ongoing support and passion in sharing information about Canadian and e-health.)

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Stay in touch,
Natalie

Connect with me on the following networks:
FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn

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ALGORITHM: Choosing the Appropriate Canadian Healthcare Regulatory Guidelines

As a pharmaceutical marketer, you need to be creative and innovative to achieve your brand’s strategic and financial objectives, but you must do so while staying within the regulatory guidelines.  In Canada, there are several sets of regulatory guidelines and codes that relate to Canadian pharma / healthcare advertising and promotion.  How do you know which ones to follow for which circumstances?

Patrick Massad, the Chief Review Officer at the PAAB, presented an algorithm at the “Social Media Marketing in Pharma: What Works in Canada” workshop, which is meant to help identify which set of guidelines to follow in certain circumstances. A modified version is found below.

When in doubt, contact the various regulatory bodies and explain your specific situation to determine which organization is responsible for clearing your advertising / promotional collaterals and campaigns. Note that the Health Canada Food & Drugs Act is the basis for the policies, guidelines, and regulations on drug advertising. Regulatory bodies enforce these.

	TYPE OF PRODUCT
	Rx and Schedule D product	Non-prescription / Natural health product
Promoting to Healthcare Professionals	Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB)	Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB)
Promoting to Patients (have a prescription for the product)	Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB)	Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB)
Promoting to Consumers	Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB) OR Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) can provide an opinion on behalf of Health Canada	Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) OR MIJO (Formerly BCA)

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For those who are curious, the following is a list of promotional guidelines for some other countries;

Australia:
Medicines Australia

Medical Technology Association of Australia

Brazil:
Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) / (Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency). Promotional guidelines in Portuguese only.

Denmark:
Danish Medical Association (LF), Danish Pharmaceutical Association (DA), Danish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (Lif), Danish Generic Medicines Industry Association (IGL), Parallel Importers of Pharmaceuticals (PI)

Europe: European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA)
EFPIA Code on the promotion of prescription only medicines to, and interactions with, healthcare professionals

EFPIA Code of practice on relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and patient organisations

France:
Les Entreprises du Médicament (LEEM)

United Kingdom:
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)

United States of America:
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)

Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC)

Advanced Medical Technology Association

Note that I am not a pharmaceutical regulatory expert.  I am providing these resources as a service to my blog’s readers.  If you have specific regulatory questions, please contact the appropriate organization.

Stay in touch,
Natalie

Connect with me on the following networks:
FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn

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