The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched an e-learning course to help monitor that information the pharma companies provide about prescription drugs.
Created in conjunction with MedScape, the e-learning course is designed to alert healthcare providers and students to potentially untruthful drug ads and promotional materials.
The course offers continuing medical education (CME) credit for doctors and continuing education (CE) credit for other healthcare providers. While it was developed with healthcare providers in mind, anyone can take the course.
The FDA is hoping that reaching students now with ‘Bad Ad’ information will have a career-long effect on how they view prescription drug promotion. Several case studies, based on common problems, have been made available on the Bad Ad website.
According to Thomas Abrams, director of the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the organisation will encourage medical, pharmacy, nursing and other healthcare-related schools to incorporate these cases into their coursework.
“The cases cover a range of promotional materials including a website, journal ad, and TV ad, and touch upon numerous promotional practices that don’t comply with our regulations,” he said.
“Through the case studies, students will have an opportunity to evaluate and discuss these real-life examples of misleading drug promotion.”
The Bad Ad programme is administered by the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
According to the FDA, prescription drug advertising must be accurate and consistent with FDA-approved prescription information, balance the risk and benefits information, and only include information that is supported by strong evidence.