For the purposes of nominated signatory review you should consider anyone who is not a health professional as a member of the general public. The over arching principle to consider with this audience is that for the majority of countries, promotion or ‘advertising’ of prescription medicines to the general public is forbidden. (Notable exceptions are the USA and New Zealand).

Therefore any material designed for the general public must generally be non promotional in content, appearance and tone. The requirements for the material to be factual, accurate and balanced all apply.

Patients are a special subset of the general public. From a nominated signatory perspective patients may be people who have been prescribed and are being treated with an AstraZeneca product, or representatives of a patient population (e.g. members of a patient organisation).

We will explore the principles applying to each of these in turn, along with some examples of materials and information for each.