During the COVID-19 lockdowns one global medical industry went into a partial deep freeze — the business of the face-to-face drug rep visit.

In Australia, pharmaceutical companies have generally invested some $330 million a year in these contacts with doctors, resulting in hundreds of thousands of visits.

But the rapid retraction of the in-person drug rep visit over the last two years of the pandemic has come amid claims of a wider decline, apparently fuelled by a younger generation of doctors who are wary of relationships with pharma.

It has reached such a point that a sales rep in the US, Patrick Caputo, stirred the social media pot last week with his post featuring a photograph of a “NO drug reps PLEASE” warning poster pinned to the front of a medical practice.