First ‘Dear Doctor’ Notice Arrives Via Online Network

Organizer wants additional manufacturer, prescriber participation

It’s taken nearly three years to get up and running, but it is now possible for pharma manufacturers to send FDA-sanctioned notifications to physicians via an e-mail network, the Health Care Notification Network (HCNN). The first actual notice went out in late October concerning an updated warning label, for fluoroquinolone antibiotics, from Bayer.

Conventional Practice for such communications is a letter sent via postal mail, or a fax to doctors’ offices. The problem has been that there is no assurance that the notifications were read and acted upon. Now—provided that individual physicians have signed up to be part of HCNN—the e-mail notices can go out with a mechanism for confirming that the e-mail has been received and opened.

HCNN, which is in the midst of a campaign to raise prescribers’ signups for the service beyond the 100,000 or so it currently has, is managed by the iHealth Alliance, which in turn is sponsored by several medical societies. The network is run by a contractor, Medem, Inc. (San Francisco), along with a follow-up mail service run by J.M. Knipper Co. (Lakewood, NJ).