Some doctors want payment for e-detailing

Physicians like being able to view drug marketing information on their own schedules, but some would need to be paid to do it again.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Aug. 18, 2003.

Physicians who participated in an e-detailing study found the online experience educational and convenient, but 39% of them would have to be paid to do it again, according to a survey by Forrester Research Inc.

E-detailing is the practice of physicians going online to view pharmaceutical sales representative presentations, order drug samples and see other materials, as if a sales rep actually had come to the office.

The survey found that doctors "find value in e-detailing, but a lot of them think that the honorarium is the main reason to do it," said Elizabeth W. Boehm, an analyst with the Cambridge, Mass.-based market research company. "A lot of doctors felt this was ultimately professional time that they were spending, even if they did e-detailing in the evening" after office hours, she said.

To conduct the survey, Forrester asked several e-detailing firms to recruit physicians, lining up 2,237 doctors. Of those, 81% or 1,820 physicians did e-details with pharmaceutical companies. Physicians did not receive any honorarium for their participation, Boehm said.

Sixty-one percent of the e-detailing physicians said they would do it again without any strings attached, while 39% said they would do it again only if they were offered an honorarium, preferably cash.

Forty percent said honoraria are the reason they do e-details, 55% said honoraria would sway their decision to complete one e-detail over another, and fewer than 1% said they oppose honoraria on principle.