Pharmalot recently covered the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists statement that birth control should be provided over the counter. There are lots of reasons why it makes sense according to their research, including increasing usage among those populations that need it, and increasing adherence. It stands to reason that if you remove an obstacle for [...]
Last month the FDA formally announced that Budeprion XL 300 is “not therapeutically equivalent” to Wellbutrin antidepressant, even though for many years it has been prescribed as Wellbutrin’s generic equivalent. This is not a surprise to the many patients who complained about Budeprion’s effectiveness as early as 2007, saying things like: “Wellbutrin worked fine for [...]
Since our recent launch of Treato Pharma at Health 2.0, we’ve been getting lots of attention from digital marketing agencies and pharma companies. Most recently, Simon Smith, the passionate digital strategist from Klick Health, reviewed Treato and Treato Pharma in his article “Can Treato make social listening safe (and useful) for pharma?” He explains how [...]
Just in case you missed the Google alert, tweet, LinkedIn or Facebook notification, it’s now official – the new, professional version of Treato, aka Treato Pharma, is available. Treato Pharma interprets vasts amounts of patient experiences from blogs and forums into an efficient, user-friendly format for pharmaceutical marketers and agencies, to enable them to incorporate [...]
Reprinted with permission from e-Patient Dave: A Voice of Patient Engagement, originally posted November 5, 2011 (and still so relevant today that we wanted to share it with our readers, too). I often hear about how patients are a major part of the cost problem – their “non-compliance,” their wanting everything they can get, wanting [...]
One might assume that the primary reason for patients switching medications is due to insurance or financial (price) reasons. However, upon analyzing what patients state as their switching reasons, we find that these are among the least influential reasons for making a switch. It’s wonderful when medicine offers a treatment for your ailment but sometimes, [...]
My son, Jayden, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy around the age of two years old. The Reader’s Digest version of the story goes like this: I delivered my son at 39 weeks. At birth, he had APGAR scores of 8 and 9 and except for being a bit colicky he was fine. Until one month [...]
The “patent cliff” is here, with patents on blockbuster drugs such as Singulair, Plavix, Seroquel and Actos expiring, and it is critical that pharmaceutical companies listen to what patients are saying about generic alternatives. Preconceptions and opinions about generic medications abound, but do patients have their facts straight? Analyzing thousands of patient discussions on health [...]
If you’re of a certain age, a “teaspoon” in dosing parlance meant exactly that: the spoon your mom used to give you your medicine was the same stainless steel spoon with which you ate your cereal. A teaspoon was a teaspoon. I was recently reminded of those days. I can still taste a ground up [...]
Imagine living most of your adult life in chaos and not knowing why. That’s they way I lived until I was 46. My world was jumbled and made no sense. Finally after a meltdown of epic proportions I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I knew nothing of the disorder or how to control it. After being stung with [...]
