For pharmaceutical companies and distributors eager to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, the seas can be stormy indeed. It’s easy to break the rules of the global marketplace and wind up in trouble – with the authorities of a country you do business in, or by unintentionally misleading customers.
Dry little warnings printed on the package didn’t do the job. Thirty years of dire public service announcements didn’t get it done, either. Education isn’t working, even though the statistics should be enough to ensure nobody ever smokes again, anywhere on earth. Despite all this effort, and despite the fact that 5.4 million people die […]
In the grand tradition of preying on people desperate for help, several OTC products on the market offer help they cannot deliver. In May, the FDA and the FTC teamed up to take action against products that make fraudulent claims to treat, cure, or prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, chronic patient noncompliance – refusal or inability to take prescribed medications – results in nearly $300 billion in avoidable costs to the healthcare system when patients wind up in the hospital. Pharmacies, especially independents that have more time to focus on customer services, […]
HealthOneMed recently announced Dispense-A-Pill (DAP), a new device designed to help patients manage medications and provide reminders and alerts for up to three months at a time.
Last month the CDC posted a lighthearted look at emergency preparedness by couching a serious subject in terms of a zombie attack, and the ploy worked. The blog post, Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse by Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan, scored millions of hits in a single week. The web public loved the rare glimpse of […]
Improving the health care system to lower costs and make health care more accessible has been a topic of discussion in the U.S. for decades. One objection to President Obama’s health care bill was the fear that there would not be enough doctors to cover the additional patients and services. Fortunately, pharmacies were already in […]
If a customer comes to you with an infection asking about OTC medications, would you know if it were MRSA? MRSA is a strain of staphylococcus aureus, or staph infection resistant to antibiotics. Staph bacteria can be found anywhere, including on the skin of nearly 1/3 of the population. About one out of every 100 […]
