Doctors who do not receive visits from drug sales representatives (Isf) respond much more slowly to developments in the sector, such as the launch of new products, but also the affixing of particular warnings such as 'black boxes', and evidence that come from clinical trials.
This is what emerges from a study sponsored by AstraZeneca and carried out by Zs Associates, which has earned the pages of the 'Journal of Clinical Hypertension' with the title: 'Limited access to scientific information can influence the prescribing decisions of doctors ? A study of recent events related to diabetes and cholesterol medications. Using the AccessMonitor report by Zs Associates, which records the frequency of visits by ISFs to over 300,000 American white coats, the authors analyzed prescribing habits in three events: the launch, in October 2006, of a new anti-diabetic product; the placing of a black label on the packaging of another anti-diabetes, in August 2007; finally, the publication of discouraging data in January 2008 on a drug for high cholesterol. Well, the doctors who receive fewer visits from informants were 4.6 times slower to introduce the new anti-diabetic drug into their prescriptions than those who met the ISF an average number of times, experts calculate. They took four times longer to reduce use of the risky medicine and showed significantly less response to the blood cholesterol data.
"Policies that promote limits to doctors' access to information - comments George Chressanthis, former AstraZeneca executive and now director of the Center for Healthcare Research and Management at Temple University's Fox School of Business - are at odds with health protection of patients".
Family doctors, in particular, rely much more on the Isf than on specialists, "because – explains Pratap Khedkar of Zs Associates – the latter are concentrated in a narrow field and can always be updated by other means, including conferences, forums online, podcasts and academic journals. Thus, the updates they receive from ISFs have less of an impact on their prescribing capacity."
May 24, 2012 – PharmaKronos
