Online network delivers specialty-focused emails to subscribing clinicians

The Wall Street Journal (3/25, D7, Rubenstein) reports that "a nonprofit group called the iHealth Alliance is launching an online network that will email alerts to doctors who sign up" about specialty-focused "significant drug-label changes, warnings, and recalls," as well as public health emergency and bioterrorism alerts. After receiving an initial email, clinicians "will get updates by going to a website called the Health Care Notification Network, which will archive alerts for a year," and "provide suggested language that doctors can forward to their patients, explaining the alerts in lay terms." Additionally, those who use the site "will be able to hit buttons that will let them send feedback to the" Food and Drug Administration "or the manufacturers about patients’ reactions to drugs." Notably, pharmaceuticals "will pay to use the new system, which will be free for doctors, and won’t include any drug-company marketing materials."