Should doctors really be finding out about drugs from salespeople?
It seems to me that this is a large part of the problem and perverts the incentives in the industry not to produce what people need but what they can sell.
There has got to be a more efficient way for doctors to discover what drugs are useful to the patients they treat.
Heck, look at the tech startup industry. Very few if any of us learn about new startups from traveling salespeople. We learn about them from websites like Hacker News, TechCrunch, TechMeme, etc.
Do we have doctor bloggers that make an effort to learn about new drugs and discover what is and isn't worthwhile?
I would imagine that the very reliance on salespeople actually makes it harder to bring good, useful drugs to market because the industry generates its own noise for doctors that they themselves need to cut through.
Every pharma salesperson I've ever known has been for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from viagra spam emails in my inbox, except for they have a pulse and "pay" for readership through expensive dinners and other niceties.
The entire drug information dissemination machine is broken.
I didnt't downvote, but you might be drawing a too rosy picture of the software industry. There are a fleet of travelling salesman paying for dinners and giving away luxury goods . You'll see microsoft throwing big monney around to have it's products adopted. You'll see big industry contractors playing all the dirty games to get to sit at the same table as a big potential client.
It's plenty corrupt when you look at the big fishes, just not as much as the pharmatical industry (yet).
It seems to me that this is a large part of the problem and perverts the incentives in the industry not to produce what people need but what they can sell.
There has got to be a more efficient way for doctors to discover what drugs are useful to the patients they treat.
Heck, look at the tech startup industry. Very few if any of us learn about new startups from traveling salespeople. We learn about them from websites like Hacker News, TechCrunch, TechMeme, etc.
Do we have doctor bloggers that make an effort to learn about new drugs and discover what is and isn't worthwhile?
I would imagine that the very reliance on salespeople actually makes it harder to bring good, useful drugs to market because the industry generates its own noise for doctors that they themselves need to cut through.
Every pharma salesperson I've ever known has been for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from viagra spam emails in my inbox, except for they have a pulse and "pay" for readership through expensive dinners and other niceties.
The entire drug information dissemination machine is broken.