FDA Public Hearing: Not Deja Vu All Over Again?

At eyeforpharma's eCommunication & Online Marketing Summit, the audience had a lot of questions about the upcoming FDA public hearing. At one point, the discussion turned to the nature of the speakers for this hearing versus the 1996 hearing. I prepared the following chart to illustrate the differences:




There are some interesting differences, including:

• No representatives from search engines spoke at the 1996 meeting. Search wasn't a factor yet.
• There was good representation from healthcare professional groups (18%) in 1996. I'm talking about organizations like the AMA. This time there are no physician groups presenting. There's Sermo, but I count that among the health Web sites.
• This year there are far fewer pharmaceutical/device companies presenting than in 1996 when 21% of the speakers were from pharma.
• This year, agencies and industry service providers dominate the speaker roster. Obviously, they have the most to gain (or lose).

Just FYI.