VisszaAbstract:
Promotion of medical products in medical journals is influenced by economic and professional (medicine) factors. Besides incentives, such ads still play a key role in influencing physician prescription behavior, which is a primer goal of Big Pharma marketing. Using graph-theory based network analysis we examined pharmaceutical ads in Hungarian medical journals. The dataset contained cumulated data of 39 months: 4413 promotional relationship between medicamentums (n=1642) and medical journals (m=99). Various distributions of the dataset showed power law distribution. Journal-Medicamentum bipartite graph were derived and converted into non-bipartite graphs (Journal-Journal and Medicamentum-Medicamentum.). Using the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System and cluster analysis (Raghavan et al, 2007) we found that similar ATC coded drugs and similar professional journals tend to connect and form clusters. A real-life validated result of network analysis suggests further research in the field.
http://www.elitmed.hu/upload/pdf/halozatkutatas_a_medicinaban_es_hatarteruletein-9786.pdf