The Australian Health IT Community have had very good news today!
A highly reliable source has reported that the Health Communication Network (HCN) which markets a range of GP software (including Medical Director and PracSoft) has decided to remove drug advertising from their software over the next few months.
What used to happen was that as prescription printing was being entered and processed small and large advertisements for branded prescription drugs were displayed – presumably to remind the clinician which medicines were the best for their patients.
The offset for this advertising was a considerable reduction in the cost of the software.
This particular way of garnering revenue was seen by virtually every reputable observer (including the AMA, the National Prescribing Service, the Royal Australian College of General Practice) as being quite unacceptable.
I also understand that the Medicines Australia latest Code of Conduct revision bans all promotion in prescribing software (following similar pressure from many stakeholders including consumer organisations).
Given no company is going to willingly give up what is known to be significant revenue it seems as though all this pressure has finally been compelling!
Indeed this blog has tried to ramp up the pressure also and has pointed out on a number of occasions how unacceptable the practice is!
See:
http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2008/10/useful-and-interesting-health-it-links_19.html
and
http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2009/03/useful-and-interesting-health-it-news_22.html
and
http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2009/02/useful-and-interesting-health-it-links_08.html
and
http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2007/10/useful-and-interesting-health-it-links_14.html
HCN have always claimed their advertising would not influence clinical decision makers, but given the pharmaceutical companies were clearly prepared to pay for access to the advertising platform there can be no doubt they were assessing the results and would not have continued to spend if it had not been working.
Avid watchers of the Grunen Transfer on ABC1 and ABC2 will be clear as to the truth of this statement!
It is my hope we can now develop a genuinely competitive GP Software market where the best software is rewarded with market share – not the cheapest advertising supported product!
David.
2 comments:
A couple of facts to go with your opinions...
This 'noxious element' is undoubtedly the reason why GP EHR adoption in Oz is so far ahead of the US - read your own blog and compare the number of "so what - we had that 10 years ago" announcements contained within.
The success of advertising in MD (which was frankly good commerce conducted within the rules of the time) certainly screwed the competitive landscape and may have had unfavourable clinical consequences (evidence?) but many other truly noxious elements in health IT entrenched the product's monopoly beyond its natural used by date.
Take divisions for an example - when their IT/IM officers were getting funded, they effectively positioned themselves as surrogate govt funded HCN support officers. So not only did the Spectrums, Zedmeds, Genies, Profiles, MT32s of this world have to compete against a superior revenue model, they had to compete against the short sightedness of the division network, who were 'just trying to help their customer blah blah'. With HCN prices set to increase, do any of these white knights seriously think they have done their customers any favours now?
It was tough going for these smaller companies, operating with sub-scale customer bases for many years. It was only after division IT funding was dropped that HCN had to start increasing their fees to cover the true cost of support, and customers then started to realise that arguably better products existed with comparable price tags.
History is repeating in the secure messaging space, with divisions leveraging their resources to create localised secure messaging monopolies at the expense of competition. Picking winners is dangerous and unethical, especially when it is done by public servants.
BTW - HCN hasn't extracted 'significant revenue' from ads for some time, nor have it's products been cheaper than competing products for some time. High switching costs are what makes its monopoly sticky - not advertising.
Can I say I find this commentary above somewhat confused. A few points.
1. There is no doubt advertising in MD reduced the adoption costs and distorted the GP software market in Australia.
2. There is no doubt the advertising worked (for big pharmas goals) or the big pharma would have stopped paying years ago.
3. A level playing field which is now emerging is a good thing.
4. I see the adoption of computers in GP being driven by funds from Govt to do it (PIP) - then the GPs chose the cheapest software option - and so we wound up with a virtual monopoly until commercial pressures and altering subsidies shifted the landscape - and some better products were able to be developed and supported.
5. It is ironic about what is happening in messaging - The 1996 Business Case to establish HCN (the Health Communication Network then) - aimed to get this happening a decade plus ago. I should know as I wrote a good part of it.
6. I am hoping - as I said in the post - for an outcome now where the best clinically relevant and usable software wins!
7. If there was little money in it I wonder why HCN stuck with it for so long when they knew how many felt it to be a very bad idea.
I am pleased the decision has now been taken and we can all move on.
David.
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