Pharmas protest NH drug info law

Pharmaceutical industry vendors are suing to get a New Hampshire law thrown out which they claim unconstitutionally restricts their use of physician-identifiable prescription information. New Hampshire's House Bill 1346, which took effect this summer, is the first state or federal effort to limit commercial use of physician-identifiable data (patient data is already protected by HIPAA). Currently, pharma industry intermediaries like IMS Health and Verispan collect prescription information from pharmacies, sort it by physician, and sell it to pharma manufacturers. The pharma companies say that they need this information to manage drug recall programs, conduct market research and support physician sales efforts. Legislators, for their part, hope to lower drug costs by discouraging aggressive physician targeting by drug companies. They argue that such targeting can result in physicians prescribing more expensive brand-name medicines over equally-effective (and cheaper) generics.

To learn more about the controversy:
- read this New Hampshire Business Review article [1]
- see the IMS Health release [2]