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The amount of spending to market Big Pharma's products comes to about $95,000 per doctor per year in the US alone. Now, they're interacting with docs at the point of writing prescriptions.You've likely seen your doctor using a nifty mobile phone application, called Epocrates, before writing a prescription. Such a clever device - and your doc didn't have to pay a penny for it. But you do. You pay for it in terms of adverse effects, less effective drugs, and money. Lots of money.
Mobile devices are the big new thing in pharmaceutical marketing, and one company now dominates the industry: Epocrates. Clever name that, but it plays on the name of Hippocrates, whose oath includes a statement that a doctor should first do no harm. That oath is shredded by Epocrates' Big Pharma connections and funding by advertisements.
Of the $60 billion spent each year on marketing, according to former Epocrates CEO, Kirk Loevner, $16 billion is spent trying to directly influence doctors. That's $23,333 per doctor per year, and the industry is planning to increase that figure. They do it for one reason alone: it works.
Doctors who claim it doesn't are, at best, fooling themselves. Epocrates says that pharmaceutical companies that purchase DocAlerts return three dollars for every dollar spent. Doc Alerts are thinly-disguised advertisements that physicians must go through before getting to their drug searches. Obviously, these ads are effective in convincing doctors to prescribe drugs.