by mark on January 5, 2012
Over the holidays, and without fanfare, the FDA issued Draft Guidance for Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information. The title of the guidance is a little deceptive in that within the document lies some draft guidance on dealing with social media in the form of ‘public’ platforms where some of this conversation may take place. The guidance doesn’t give us a road map for working with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but it is progress. The most noteworthy element is that unsolicited public inquiries for off-label information, as an example in YouTube comments for a pharma YouTube channel, should only get medical affairs contact information as a response.
The guidance came out while everyone was still digesting their Christmas dinner and it flew right under the radar of all the pharma Twitterati during the lull between Christmas and New Years. People returning to their offices in January found it in their inbox and panicked that the FDA has said something, anything, about social media. Digital agency leads scrambled to produce a POV on the guidance and the blogs began (email me if you want my POV).
There are now many, many interpretations and analyses out there, and Fabio Gratton did a great job of collecting them into a Storify stream listing all of the articles from media, agencies, pharma companies, and law firms. Another great tool was created by Jon Richman of Dose of Digital fame – this one is a flowchart for deciphering the sometimes tangled logic in the guideline. I love the sense of humor.
The FDA has some sharp people on their staff that clearly understand social media. The original request for response on social media (over two years ago, now) demonstrated a strong grasp of the issues. Therefore, it’s surprising that the FDA does not address moderation in the draft guidance. Moderation may be used to pre-review comments prior to public posting on platforms managed by companies. It is possible using moderation tools to prohibit posting of off-label comments entirely and to respond to an inquiry privately without it ever being seen by the public.
We’ll see if 2012 is the year to finally see some guidelines.
by mark on December 17, 2011
Like a lot of people, I use GMail as my main inbox. Several email accounts are ‘fetched’ by GMail and all that email ends up in one convenient in-box. I’ve got GMail set up so that when I reply to an email, it appears as if I replied from the account it was sent to, rather than the GMail account itself. This is pretty easy to set up (instructions are here) and it allows you to separate work and personal identities, as an example.
However, my iPhone / iPad has frustrated me in this regard. I have been limited to one email address and when I reply on my phone, it comes from my default email address on the phone, which may not be the one it was sent to, leading to some confusion. I have gone so far as to create two email accounts on my phone which actually access the same GMail in-box so I could separate work and personal, and the right email address would send the account.
I’ve discovered that there’s a much simpler way to do this on the iPhone / iPad. If you follow the instructions below, you’ll get a pick list like the image above, where you can reply to any email using your choice of addresses. So, you can end the confusion and get rid of those extra accounts.
To add additional email addresses for sending mail to an iPhone / iPad Mail email account do the following (this assumes familiarity with basic email on the phone and copying and pasting):
- Figure out the email addresses you want to use as sending addresses.
- Type them into an email and send it to an account you can access on the phone. Separate each address with a comma followed by a space.
- Open the email on the phone and ‘copy’ the whole set so they are in the phone’s copy and paste buffer.
Now the email part:
- Make sure the account is set up as an IMAP or POP account (using Other while creating the account, not Gmail, for example).
- Tap Settings on the iPhone or iPod touch home screen.
- Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
- Choose the desired account under Accounts.
- Tap the Address field under IMAP Account Information and select it all.
- Tap “Paste” which will replace the one email address, with all the addresses you might need. This is the important step.
- Tap done and exit out of setting
Now, when you are sending a message or replying from your email on your phone, you can tap “From” and select the address you want to use. It’s that easy!
GMail has a lot of good support files around this subject for more information. I was also pleasantly surprised that About.com has a very in-depth set of resources around email written by their ‘guide’ Heinz Tschabitscher.
Over the holidays, and without fanfare, the FDA issued Draft Guidance for Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information. The title of the guidance is a little deceptive in that within the document lies some draft guidance on dealing with social media in the form of ‘public’ platforms where some of this conversation may take place. The guidance doesn’t give us a road map for working with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but it is progress. The most noteworthy element is that unsolicited public inquiries for off-label information, as an example in YouTube comments for a pharma YouTube channel, should only get medical affairs contact information as a response.
