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Volume 360:745-747 February 19, 2009 Number 8 Next

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In November 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld against constitutional attack a New Hampshire statute that prohibits data miners from selling information about physicians' prescribing histories to pharmaceutical companies for use by sales representatives ("detailers").¹ Pharmaceutical companies annually spend billions of dollars on detailing, which entails visiting individual physicians to persuade them to prescribe specific brand-name drugs. A detailer who knows a physician's prescribing history can effectively tailor his or her promotional message.

Although the statute prohibits data miners from transferring the prescribing history of individual physicians "for any commercial purpose," including the "marketing, promotion, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Source Information

Dr. Post is a professor of law at Yale Law School, New Haven, CT.

Related Letters:

Prescribing Records and the First Amendment
Sullivan L. W., Post R.
Extract | Full Text | PDF  
N Engl J Med 2009; 361:209-210, Jul 9, 2009. Correspondence

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Sullivan, L. W., Post, R. (2009). Prescribing Records and the First Amendment. NEJM 361: 209-210 [Full Text]