Last week social media giant Facebook reversed its privilege to pharmaceutical companies – the ability to disable Facebook Walls, and thus, the ability to comment on their Facebook pages. As a consequence of this reversal, pharmaceutical companies need to have open Walls from Monday onwards. Pages focused on companies themselves and on disease or patient-specific communities are now open to comments, while those focused on a specific prescription product continue to be closed.
Facebook has chosen not to make the reason for this reversal public. Andrew Noyes, manage of public policy communications for Facebook said in an e-mail, “We think these changes will help encourage an authentic dialogue on Pages.”
According to a report by Washington Post, pharma companies are worried that open Walls means risks and are reconsidering their engagement on Facebook.
The pharmaceutical industry is concerned that Facebook users might comment about adverse side effects, promote off-label use or make inappropriate statements about a product and that the comments could raise concerns from government regulators.
Joe Farris, co-founder of the Digital Health Coalition, a non-profit group involved in online marketing of health-care products said users might write on a company’s Wall about a specific product causing an unexpected reaction or injury. That comment could qualify as an adverse event reports (AER) and must then be filed with the Food and Drug Administration, which uses the reports to monitor product safety.
As an outcome of this withdrawal, companies have decided to shut down some of their Pages and update their social media policies to avoid potential problems. Others have revamped their commenting guidelines and said that they will more closely monitor the comments made on their Pages.
On Friday, AstraZeneca, shut down a page devoted to depression. The page, “Take on Depression” had more than 1,100 ‘Likes’. Tony Jewell, spokesperson for the company said, “We are very strongly committed to social media, but we have to make sure that the amount of time and resources spent on it is appropriate.”
Johnson & Johnson, on Monday, closed down four of its Pages – ADHD Allies and ADHD Moms, as also Pages on rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, which had a combined ‘Likes’ of 40,000.
Spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, Bill Price said, “The regulatory environment and changes in Facebook functionality are creating a much more difficult environment for managing these kinds of Pages.”
Purdue Pharma, Bayer and Amgen are other companies which have decided to close down a few of their Pages.
While Amgen is not comfortable with the currently available solutions, Purdue Pharma said it might reevaluate its decision when the FDA releases guidelines for online engagement.
Some companies like Pfizer and Sanofi say that they have not encountered any problems so far and ‘monitoring’ of the Pages is going on smoothly.
According to Lisa Gualtieri, assistant professor at the Tufts School of Medicine who studies social media and health, Facebook has been an increasingly popular destination for patient communities, with many shifting over the past couple years from message boards and other Web sites to pages hosted by companies.
However, as Steve Woodruff, a social media consultant said, “Pharmaceutical companies have been at the shallow end of the social-media pool because it is such a highly regulated and conservative industry and many companies had not joined Facebook until it had given them the privilege of closed walls.”
In contrast to the companies, this move implies an improvement for users who will not be navigating the corporates’ Pages in vain and will be able to say what they want to say.