While U.S. doctors are seeing more pharma reps with iPads in hand, U.K. doctors are seeing fewer pharma reps, period. According to a recent survey reported at PMLive, more than half of general practitioners in Britain admitted no drug salespeople during the previous week, and another 26% saw just one.

By those figures, only 22% of U.K. physicians saw more than one pharma rep during the period. And no, the Doctors.net.uk survey wasn't taken during the Olympics, so the GPs weren't hiding in their offices to watch water polo.

Instead, the GPs said, they didn't have enough time to see reps--or their medical practices prohibited it, or they worried that reps wouldn't provide impartial information. Whatever the reason, one-fourth of them said they preferred to look up drug information online. "Independent online resources," to be precise.

So, while it might appear that drugmakers could shift their detailing to online channels--allowing doctors to peruse the information on their own schedules--the solution may not be that simple. As the Doctors.net.uk folks point out, previous surveys found that only 3% of doctors think the industry's online resources are credible, and 42% never go to pharma websites.