The FDA continues to show that it's stuck in a time-warp concerning the use of social media in the healthcare industry. The fact that the Internet is the overwhelming destination of choice for patients to find healthcare information and that over 50% of the US adult population is now on Facebook seems to have completely passed the FDA by.

While social media is now a staple marketing tool in the strategy of product managers in consumer-centric industries, the pharma industry has lagged far behind, deterred primarily through a lack of guidance from regulators.

The UK budget was unveiled on Wednesday and it contained few surprises. The UK government has continually reaffirmed its position on the need to reduce its budget deficit, and with this as the backdrop, a financially neutral budget was announced.

Despite the lack of game-changing plans, the budget was described by George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, as ‘a budget for growth’. Interestingly, the Chancellor specifically identified a number of sectors that have the potential to help lead the UK economy back to more robust growth, and Life Sciences was one such industry.

The panic about the expected loss of revenues from products losing patent protection appears almost as large as the revenue drop itself! 

Here at Sociable Pharma, we expect articles, reports and commentary analyzing the issue to increase in frequency in the run-up to Lipitor’s patent expiry in November, seen by many in the industry as the high-water mark for patent expiry problems.