Health Law Advisor

FDA has recently partnered with PatientsLikeMe, an online patient networking forum, to leverage patient-reported information to bolster its drug safety monitoring efforts. PatientsLikeMe, with its 350,000 members representing over 2,500 health conditions, has collected more than 110,000 adverse event reports on 1,000 different drugs. This partnership, which is in the form of a research collaboration agreement, will provide FDA with access to "real-world" data about patients' drug and disease experiences (the information provided to FDA is anonymous; so it does not ...

At the International Association of Privacy Professionals ("IAPP") Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C. on March 5^th and March 6^th, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") was clear in its message that privacy was a top priority for the agency.  The FTC had a strong presence at the conference.  Three of the five Commissioners and the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection (Jessica Rich) all spoke at the conference and relayed a message of the importance of consumer privacy and security.  In that regard, the FTC speakers stressed the importance of:

• informing consumers of the ...