Despite heavy restrictions on DTC advertising in Europe, nearly two in five online Europeans would like to be able to learn more about prescription drugs directly from a pharmaceutical company, according to the new Cybercitizen Health Europe study from pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research.

 

Cybercitizen Health Europe 2011 explores how European consumers use digital health and pharma information and tools. The study was fielded online among 3,020 adults (ages 18+) in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain in Q3 2011. Major topics in the 2011 research include multiscreen online health behavior, online health information discovery, digital health media mix, prescription drug information seeking, and online pharma resources in Europe.

 

Online consumers in Italy show the strongest desire to learn about prescription drugs from pharmaceutical companies, while their counterparts in Germany are the least likely to be interested. Additionally, certain patient groups across Europe overall, such as online consumers diagnosed with acute pain, osteoporosis, and arrhythmia, show a higher interest in this type of information from pharma than the average online consumer.

 

Online consumers show much higher demand for practical online resources from pharmaceutical companies, such as disease and treatment information and condition management tools, than for online contests and games.

 

Among consumers who are already using or interested in online information and tools from pharmaceutical companies, only 13%  want to access this content on Facebook and 5% on Twitter. In contrast, 43% of this audience would like to obtain pharma resources from websites about conditions and diseases.