Note from Bob: The day will come when every trip to the doctor, every contact between patients and the medical industry, every Google search for medical information, every posting frenzy on a forum such as this, every blaze of twittering about health, will be part of a massive perpetual world-wide clinical trial, involving “data mining” from the digital trails left by tens of millions of people…

...it is already starting… the white mice are taking over the experiment, as foreseen by Reverett 123 and Aunt Bean and JohnT and many other home-made citizen scientists…

Have doctors ever heard of this new-fangled ee-lectrical type-writer thingy called “the internet”; plus added features such as “cloud computing” (I used to think it meant going outside and counting the clouds).

Well here it comes, wake up, Big Pharma. Even King Canut would not attempt turn this tide… and it is a tide that bodes well for noble and serf alike. It’s what’s happening, Dudes and Dudettes. Are you on the bus, or off the bus?

Be there or be square. It’s a new scene, Dean. Stop putting that greasy kid’s stuff in your hair. Brylcream - A little dab will do ‘ya. She will love to run her fingers through your hair.

Where were we? Oh yes, data mining. Ya’ load 16 tons and whaddya’ get?

As I was saying before you interrupted with your hare-brained critique:

HERE IT IS – Data mining has begun; Jill Wechsler reports:….. scientists at Microsoft Research, Stanford, and Columbia University, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (March 6, 2013), found that Internet searches on drug use uncovered previously unrecognized adverse events. Here, queries from six million people in 2010 searching for information on antidepressant Paxil and cholesterol treatment Pravachol disclosed a greater incidence of high blood sugar in patients taking the two drugs.


Just the Tip of the Iceberg: Pharma and Full Disclosure
By Jill Wechsler April 10, 2013

… …The new “Sunshine” law — requiring drug companies to report virtually every penny they transfer to physicians and teaching hospitals, whether for conducting research, consulting, or providing free lunches — is just the tip of the iceberg.

…Now regulators and health advocates seek to expand disclosure to include findings on all clinical trials, even those for drugs that fail to gain market approval. Leading medical journals are working with European Union officials to promote the AllTrials effort to register and disclose results from all clinical trials around the world. Trial summaries are not enough; safety advocates and industry critics seek disclosure of patient level data and case report forms so that they can verify the sponsor’s research results and product claims.

This call for greater data transparency reflects charges that sponsors have hidden important safety information from regulators and the public. Pharma companies counter that full disclosure can raise patient privacy issues and lead to misinterpretation of findings by non-experts.

Abbott’s pharma spin-off AbbVie has filed suit to prevent the European Medicines Agency from releasing patient-level clinical trial data, as has InterMune of California. (Bob: good ol' AbbVie just can't figure out what the People with Parkinson's are moaning and groaning about.)

….Price transparency? An equally important goal of transparency advocates is to reduce healthcare spending through competition generated by broader disclosure, online, of prices for healthcare services and medical products. …'

…Social media exposure? … much information on pharma research and prices will become public with the expansion of global search engines able to tap into millions of queries and postings on medical treatments and healthcare costs. A recent study by scientists at Microsoft Research, Stanford, and Columbia University, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (March 6, 2013), found that Internet searches on drug use uncovered previously unrecognized adverse events. Here, queries from six million people in 2010 searching for information on antidepressant Paxil and cholesterol treatment Pravachol disclosed a greater incidence of high blood sugar in patients taking the two drugs.
It’s not hard to imagine similar analyses of consumer searches for lower drug prices, product safety reports, and complaints about pharma marketing and advertising from health professionals and the public.

http://blog.pharmexec.com/2013/04/10...ll-disclosure/

Jill Wechsler is Pharm Exec’s Washington correspondent. She can be reached at jwechsler@advanstar.com.
THANK YOU JILL WECHSLER
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