Critics question ethics of stepped-up pharma data mining

With the crackdown on gifts to physicians, and a slowing in direct-to-consumer advertising, the pharmaceutical industry is turning to data mining of physician prescribing habits to fuel the marketing machine. And, as with so many other pharma marketing techniques, controversy is brewing.

"Critics see data mining as an invasion of privacy, for both patients and providers," writes Naomi Freundlich on the Health Beat blog. Many physicians seem unaware that their profiles are being sold to pharma companies--and that the American Medical Association earns $44 million a year from selling access to its Physician Masterfile. And aggregated patient data that drug companies buy from the likes of IMS Health and Verispan might not be stripped of individual identifiers, Freundlich writes.

Physician bloggers are helping to shed light on this issue. Massachusetts psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat, proprietor of The Carlat Blog, reports receiving a "confidential letter" from PBM and pharmacy chain CVS Caremark that he says was a poorly cloaked advertisement for Eli Lilly's blockbuster drug Cymbalta. "How much is Eli Lilly paying CVS Caremark to perpetrate this deception? Which executive at CVS became so overcome with greed that he or she approached Eli Lilly about this joint venture? Has CVS Caremark informed its patients that it is selling their pharmacy information to a drug company?" Carlat asked.

For more about pharma data mining:
- check out this Health Beat blog post
- read Carlat's blog post about CVS/Caremark's ties to Lilly

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