With an explosion in the use of social media in the past five years, the use of services such as Facebook and Twitter is of growing interest to pharmaceutical and medical device companies. As was shown recently with Bayer's breach of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Code (by 'tweeting' about the launch of new drugs), dangers are ever-present for pharmaceutical companies when using social media. The same is true in Australia, where a tweet or status update on Facebook may breach the prohibition against promoting to the general public under the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct. One only needs to view the definitions of 'promote' and 'promotion, promotional or promotional claim' in the Code of Conduct to see that it does not take much to gain Medicines Australia's attention in this regard.
Guidance is needed for the industry and Medicines Australia is currently seeking comment from a number of industry members about the revision of the Code of Conduct to include greater guidance and rules for interactions in the social media sphere. How these provisions will end up in the text of the Code of Conduct remains to be seen, and we hope to provide you with significant detail of the changes, as well as other areas for concern in the social media sphere, in the next edition of Life Sciences Spotlight.
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