Pharma & the Regulatory Perils of Periscope
Back in June in a posting about the new (relatively) live streaming capability brought to use by Periscope. The app, acquired by Twitter prior to its launch early in 2015, allows you to live stream content from where you are to your followers who can provide commentary – and to allow your Twitter followers to see it afterwards, including the comments. Periscope, in essence, allows you to be your own reporter. In the June posting, I talked about how it might be used to film AdComm outcomes and that it had great utility in healthcare for developments and announcements at medical meetings.
But would a pharma company use Periscope? Are there special regulatory concerns that might be in play given this particular digital venue? Here are thoughts on each question.
So are pharma companies using Periscope? You bet.
I checked out this list of the top 25 pharma companies by global sales. I found that 10 of them – or 40 percent of the top 25 pharma companies – appeared to have established Periscope feeds and some of them are even following the Eye on FDA Periscope feed (thank you!). They ranged in the size of followership from 0 (though for each of these, I became a follower so now they have at least 1 follower) to 717. I have heard of at least one company holding an event using their Periscope feed.
Which brings us to the second question – are there concerns that regulatory might bring up associated with Periscope use?
What if a company were running a broadcast of a patient group at a medical meeting and someone mentioned an off-label use? What if they stated something that was misinformation about the product? What if they mentioned an adverse event?
