At least half of doctors and patients find DTC pharma ads helpful: report

Amid ongoing debates over whether direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisements should be banned in the U.S., as they are in almost every other country, a new study suggests that many doctors and patients actually find the ad spots to be more helpful than harmful.

In its recent survey of 50 doctors and 50 patients, ZoomRx found that 50% of the healthcare professionals and 58% of the laypeople agreed that DTC pharma ads are either “somewhat” or “extremely” helpful. Meanwhile, just 22% of doctors and 16% of patients called the ads outright harmful, with both of those segments outweighed by the number of respondents in each group who were neutral on the topic.

The supporters in both groups highlighted what they perceived as the ads’ dissemination of helpful, accurate information about health conditions and potential treatments for them. A “significant majority” of the patients surveyed said they’d spoken to their doctors about medications they’d seen in DTC ads, per ZoomRx, while doctors acknowledged that the ads can help facilitate those potentially helpful conversations.

One supportive patient was quoted as praising how DTC ads “immediately alert” them to newly available medications that may help treat their autoimmune disease, after which they can further research the drug and talk about it with their rheumatologist. One of the doctors surveyed echoed those sentiments and also added that, even before inspiring them to try a new drug, the ads could inspire patients “to think about symptoms that may help with a diagnosis.”

As for those who labeled DTC pharma spots as “somewhat” or “extremely” harmful, one patient cited how “scary” it can be to repeatedly hear the required readouts of potentially life-threatening side effects in drug ads throughout the day. An anti-ad doctor went even further, criticizing how a DTC promo may encourage a patient to request a drug that isn’t an appropriate treatment for their specific case or isn’t covered by their insurance, leading to a difficult conversation denying a therapy they’ve set their sights on.

Interestingly, even if they agree on their usefulness, doctors and patients retain different things from DTC drug ads. According to ZoomRx, while physician viewers hold on to the clinical information provided in an ad, patients’ biggest takeaways often focus on nonclinical elements like the music used or celebrity spokespeople featured.

With all of those findings in mind, ZoomRx offered pharmaceutical advertisers some advice for future promos. For one, to further shift the scales in favor of “helpful” over “harmful,” drugmakers still have some “room for improvement in terms of accuracy and transparency.”

They may also want to more closely tailor the ads to doctors’ and patients’ individual preferences—for example, by upping the clinical information to appeal to healthcare providers and by increasing patient engagement with “more interactive and informative ad formats.”

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