Legislative proposals that would allow drug companies to advertise certain medicines direct to consumers as well as speed up approval of new drugs is expected to be unveiled by the European Commission on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
These proposals are the results of Commission efforts to ease a pan-European ban on direct advertising to patients of prescription drugs for AIDS, asthma and diabetes. (DIRECT Newsline June 18).
The proposal would allow pharmaceutical companies for the first time to gain direct contact with patients over specific drugs, something that is already allowed in the United States and has been sought by the industry.
EU officials said direct advertising — which makes heavy use of direct response television and direct response space advertising — would be regulated by a code of conduct and strictly limited to drugs for the three selected diseases.
Direct-to-consumer advertising has been allowed in the U.S. since 1997. Although banned in the EU, patients have been able to get more and more information about available drugs by accessing U.S. Internet sites. EU officials say the Commission’s proposal follows pressing demand for information about health remedies from consumers.
“This is aimed at addressing the situation today where some patients can access non-EU Web sites to get information while other patients who are not online cannot,”said an EU spokesman. He pointed out that even people with access to the Internet risked getting false information because drugs marketed outside the EU often differed from those marketed in the EU, even when the name of the drug was the same.
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