From the January/February 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The FDA's position, according to Dr. Daniel Schultz in his testimony during a Senate hearing, is that "medical device advertising can provide consumers with important information about medical devices and new indications for existing medical devices, as well as information about symptoms of treatable illnesses and other conditions. Done properly, medical device advertising can assist consumers in taking a proactive role in improving their health. However, to be of value, these advertisements must not be false or misleading."
Hospital Promotion of Medical Devices: Strategic Education/DTC PR
Though Schultz's statement should give OEMs comfort, to date, manufacturers have not mounted en mass consumer-directed campaigns outside of relatively anemic PR efforts like those regularly found in women's magazines. However, there have been notable exceptions, with major companies investing large sums to promote specific devices such as implants, stents and other products. J&J/DePuy mounted knee replacement and treatment campaigns over several years and Medtronic invested $100 million in print, television and online ad campaigns for its cardioverter defibrillators.
There have been other approaches that are more PR- and education-based and tend to be local in nature. It is increasingly common for medical device companies and to carry out co-op public relations campaigns with their customer-hospitals. Hospitals are now wisely seeking support from OEMs and their sophisticated PR firms in stimulating local media to cover technology application stories, couching the pr in human interest segments. These are usually initiated and most successfully pitched when the story revolves around new and/or lesser-known technology with groundbreaking or particularly efficacious applications. In some instances, such promotional cooperation is part and parcel of a contract device and service bundles, and sometimes incorporates cooperative funding.
This approach has a distinct advantage over direct paid advertising in that it has an implicit stamp-of-approval from the third party media and is therefore more credible in the eye of the consumer. Feature articles, radio interviews, television news coverage and other non-paid exposure also have the advantage of providing detail, context and storyline. Coverage typically involves direct participation by hospital physicians and other clinicians who provide diagnostic and/or treatment services with the technology, which confers credibility and serves to humanize and personify the hospital.
