The Role Of Public Relations In Medical And Regulatory Affairs

By Martin Ellis, Director, Cohn & Wolfe, UK Pharmaceutical marketeers are increasingly using public relations in their marketing mix, as evidenced by the global growth in companies and practitioners specialising in health care communications. Can the same be said of pharmaceutical company medical and regulatory departments?

Traditional Distance Kept Between PR And Medical Depts Medical departments have traditionally kept their distance from marketing in the somewhat misguided belief that marketing departments have little to add in the pre-launch clinical trial phase. This is a sweeping generalization but one that I do not apologise for if, at the least, it encourages more dialogue and joint involvement between medics and marketeers in this critical phase of a product's development.

Doctors commencing clinical trials will talk enthusiastically about the 100 or so patients with a given condition that they will be able to enlist for the study. Why then do they fail to enter any patients in the first three months, and only reach 28 patients at the end of the first year? There are many valid and understandable reasons for poor patient accrual, but how often is public relations used to maximize patient accrual?