Via Findlaw:
"A year-old online forum where 30,000 doctors swap medical observations has lined up a partnership with Pfizer Inc. - an alliance that runs counter to the site's founding ideal to give doctors a place to communicate without the pharmaceutical industry listening in...
...it's expected any postings by Pfizer's medical staff must be clearly identified as coming from a Pfizer source logging onto the system securely from an office computer...
When the service began in September 2006, it was intended as an advertisement-free forum for communication among doctors about topics such as drug side effects - in effect, a sanctuary from the influence of pharmaceutical industry and its sales staffs...
Pfizer will tap into a social network of doctors that resembles the popular Web site MySpace, but with the focus on professional concerns rather than personal information.
Pfizer's hundreds of medical staff will be able to access Sermo, but it will be off-limits to the rest of the company's 90,000 employees, said Dr. Michael Berelowitz, a senior vice president who oversees Pfizer's physicians...
Berelowitz said Pfizer also has allied itself with Sermo because of the site's growing influence in medical circles.
Sermo says it's adding physician members at a rate of 1,000 to 2,000 a week. It reached an agreement in May with the American Medical Association, and in August with the Food and Drug Administration. The agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health entered a six-month agreement to monitor doctors' Sermo exchanges and eventually gauge whether to rely long-term on Sermo's postings to supplement existing government systems to track product safety."
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