Adverts for medical devices will be prohibited from featuring actors playing the role of doctors from the start of next year, under a new law passed in Poland. The new rules also introduce measures designed to prevent social-media influencers from promoting such devices.
“The new regulations are intended to eliminate…the use of a doctor’s image in order to support advertising with social authority,” Arkadiusz Grądkowski, president of the Polish Chamber of Commerce of Medical Devices, told the Medonet news service.
The new rules bring the market for medical devices in line with those for medicines, where the use of fake doctors in advertising is already banned. Among products affected will be contact lenses, protective masks, wheelchairs and condoms.
In recent years many firms have tried to reclassify products such as cough syrups and tablets as medical devices in order to evade the tougher restrictions on medicines, lawyer Joanna Wajdzik told Medonet. The new regulations will close that loophole.
From 1 January 2023, actors will be banned from playing not only doctors, but any other medical professionals, including pharmacists, in advertising. The rules do not apply to non-commercial activities such as educational campaigns. The penalty for violating the ban is a fine of up to 2 million zloty (€431,000).
The new regulations also forbid the use of positive user opinions about a medical product to promote it. This is intended to curb the use of social-media influencers to market products, says Grądkowski.
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
