Regions
MAIN/REGIONS
regions/
Regions
  1. Americas
  2. Asia & Oceania
  3. Europe
  4. Middle East & Africa
  1. Solutions
  2. Products
  3. Insights
  4. About
  5. Careers
  6. Contact Us
MAIN/search
MAIN/Solutions
Solutions/
SOLUTIONS
  • Research & Development
  • Real World Evidence
  • Commercialization
  • Safety & Regulatory Compliance
  • Technologies
LIFE SCIENCE SEGMENTS
HEALTHCARE SEGMENTS
THERAPEUTIC AREAS

Impacting People's Lives

"We strive to help improve outcomes and create a healthier, more sustainable world for people everywhere.

LEARN MORE
Harness the power to transform clinical development

Reimagine clinical development by intelligently connecting data, technology, and analytics to optimize your trials. The result? Faster decision making and reduced risk so you can deliver life-changing therapies faster.

Research & Development Overview
Research & Development Quick Links
Real World Evidence. Real Confidence. Real Results.

Generate and disseminate evidence that answers crucial clinical, regulatory and commercial questions, enabling you to drive smarter decisions and meet your stakeholder needs with confidence.

REAL WORLD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW
Real World Evidence Quick Links
See markets more clearly. Opportunities more often.

Elevate commercial models with precision and speed using AI-driven analytics and technology that illuminate hidden insights in data.

COMMERCIALIZATION OVERVIEW
Commercialization Quick Links
Service driven. Tech-enabled. Integrated compliance.

Orchestrate your success across the complete compliance lifecycle with best-in-class services and solutions for safety, regulatory, quality and medical information.

COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW
Safety & Regulatory Compliance Quick Links
Intelligence that transforms life sciences end-to-end.

When your destination is a healthier world, making intelligent connections between data, technology, and services is your roadmap.

TECHNOLOGIES OVERVIEW
Technology Quick Links
MAIN/Products
Products/
CLINICAL PRODUCTS
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS
COMPLIANCE, SAFETY, REG PRODUCTS
REAL WORLD PRODUCTS

CASE STUDY

"Data in a Day

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Insights
Insights/
BLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES

Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.

DISCOVER INSIGHTS
THE IQVIA INSTITUTE

An in-depth exploration of the global healthcare ecosystem with timely research, insightful analysis, and scientific expertise.

SEE LATEST REPORTS

INSTITUTE REPORT

"Global Trends in R&D 2024

READ MORE

EMEA Insights

"IQVIA thought leadership with a focus on EMEA.

Learn more

WHITE PAPER

"DCTs Deliver Big ROI

LEARN MORE

WHITE PAPER

"Capturing value at scale: The $4 billion RWE imperative

LEARN MORE
MAIN/About
About/
FEATURED INNOVATIONS
  • IQVIA Connected Intelligence™
  • IQVIA Healthcare-grade AI™
  • Human Data Science Cloud
  • IQVIA Innovation Hub
  • Decentralized Trials
  • Patient Experience powered by Apple
WHO WE ARE
NEWS & RESOURCES

INVESTOR RELATIONS

"Visit our investor relations site for more information.

LEARN MORE
Unlock your potential to drive healthcare forward

By making intelligent connections between your needs, our capabilities, and the healthcare ecosystem, we can help you be more agile, accelerate results, and improve patient outcomes.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA AI is Healthcare-grade AI

Building on a rich history of developing AI for healthcare, IQVIA AI connects the right data, technology, and expertise to address the unique needs of healthcare. It's what we call Healthcare-grade AI.

LEARN MORE
Your healthcare data deserves more than just a cloud.

The IQVIA Human Data Science Cloud is our unique capability designed to enable healthcare-grade analytics, tools, and data management solutions to deliver fit-for-purpose global data at scale.

LEARN MORE
Innovations make an impact when bold ideas meet powerful partnerships

The IQVIA Innovation Hub connects start-ups with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners. Together, we can help lead the future of healthcare with the extensive IQVIA network of assets, resources, clients, and partners.

LEARN MORE
Proven, faster DCT solutions

IQVIA Decentralized Trials deliver purpose-built clinical services and technologies that engage the right patients wherever they are. Our hybrid and fully virtual solutions have been used more than any others.

LEARN MORE
IQVIA Patient Experience Solutions powered by Apple

Empowering patients to personalize their healthcare and connecting them to caregivers has the potential to change the care delivery paradigm. IQVIA and Apple are collaborating to bring this exciting future of personalized care directly to devices patients already have and use.

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Careers
Careers/
WORKING AT IQVIA

Our mission is to accelerate innovation for a healthier world. Together, we can solve customer challenges and improve patient lives.

LEARN MORE
LIFE AT IQVIA

Careers, culture and everything in between. Find out what’s going on right here, right now.

LEARN MORE

WE’RE HIRING

"Improving human health requires brave thinkers who are willing to explore new ideas and build on successes. Unleash your potential with us.

SEARCH JOBS
MAIN/Contact Us
Contact Us/
Blog
Why You Need Strategic Compliance Management for Social Media Influencers — And How to Get It
John Moose, MBA, ABV - Principal at IQVIA
Jun 09, 2020
  • Blogs
  • Why You Need Strategic Compliance Management for Social Media Influencers — And How to Get It

By creating meaningful relationships with individuals and a two-way flow of communication, social media facilitates an intimacy and an immediacy no other communication channel offers — a unique opportunity to connect directly with the public. Social media influencers are an important element of a successful, multifaceted digital engagement strategy. They are critical 21st-century opinion leaders who can be valuable partners in Life Sciences’ companies direct-to-consumer promotional engagement.

Influencers are perceived as genuine, authentic voices, and the trust and authority they enjoy among their followers are powerful tools of persuasion. The strength of their recommendations and the extent to which that drives consumer behavior makes them valuable allies for Life Sciences companies seeking to engage in a different, more effective way with patient populations.

But in introducing a new way to communicate and a fresh connection to the public, social media influencers also present new compliance complications: Risk mitigation with social media influencers is not always well thought-out, which is a tremendous vulnerability to Life Sciences companies operating under a regulatory magnifying glass.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) rolled out a plan to study Instagram influencers and how their commentary is perceived by their fans. The OPDP wants to find out if people are, in fact, influenced to modify their behavior based on recommendations, and if or to what extent disclosures of financial relationships between influencers and companies impact those consumer perceptions. “We are interested in the role of endorsement and payment status on participants’ recall, benefit and risk perceptions, and behavioral intentions,” the agency states.

Already, Life Sciences companies have to withstand considerable scrutiny regarding compensation and disclosures surrounding the opinion leaders with whom they have relationships, via consulting arrangements, promotional speaker bureaus and other channels.

Managing social media influencers demands a unique strategic approach: The very intimacy that makes these individuals so impactful in directing consumer behavior requires an entirely different set of procedural “guard rails” than more traditional promotional messaging. The intimacy and informality of influencers’ communication with their followers is invaluable for its persuasive power, but it also makes appraising that value in a compliant manner a challenging task, given that much of the clout social media influencers wield can seem subjective in ways that valuation of traditional promotional messaging is not.

Calculating Fair Market Value (FMV) compensation can be especially complicated due to the nature of the services an influencer provides, and the kinds of activity they undertake on a company's behalf. Companies need to define and calculate how to determine fair and defensible compensation for influencers who talk about or recommend a pharmaceutical product on behalf of a company.

Following regulations around appropriate disclosure — especially when those regulations are likely to shift in the future as regulatory agencies’ grasp of social media opinion leaders’ work matures — is not something that should be left to chance or tacked onto a broader compliance program with the implicit assumption that the rules will be the same.

Life Sciences companies need to work with third-party vendors that have dedicated resources and a deep well of experience on which to draw when navigating the often ambiguous regulatory guidance on this evolving topic. Working with partners that adopt a consultative approach ensures that you aren’t left to “go it alone” on critical compliance questions.

Solutions like IQVIA Commercial Compliance Consulting Services give companies the tools they need to seamlessly and cohesively integrate influencer promotional activity into compliance-centric promotional operations.

For more information about IQVIA Commercial Compliance, please email commercialcompliance@iqvia.com or visit our webpage.

Contact Us