360DigitalInfluence

Over the past year I’ve been following how attendees and influencers have been using social channels at medical conferences.  One thing that’s become very clear is the increasing level of participation by healthcare professionals like Bryan Vartabedian, M.D.  He is very active on multiple digital channels and often shares important news and information with his followers.  One thing he does not do is give medical advice online.  His blog, 33 Charts, is one of my favorites because of the wide range of topics he covers.  With post ranging from “Why Sermo Should Be More Visible” to a heated conversation about “Unprofessional Physician Behavior on Twitter” it’s no wonder he has almost 6,000 followers on Twitter.   His interest in the evolving role of social media in healthcare is personally making an impact on how other professionals view the importance of having a voice online.  He’s been active in the blogosphere since 2006 and is a well spoken public speaker that’s been showing up at a few non-healthcare related conferences like SXSW talking more about the importance of social media in healthcare.

Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. – Texas Children’s Hospital/Baylor College of Medicine

Anas Younes, M.D. – MD Anderson Cancer Center

With so many interesting and exciting things happening at professional conferences it’s hard to keep up.  Regardless of the event, there’s a lot of potential value for attendees and promoters.  This past weekend kicked off the American Society of Clinical Oncology (#ACSO11) conference.  With each passing year the potential to amplify the exciting news presents itself.  Will this year be any different?  Will we see healthcare professionals like Dr. Anas Younes tweeting or blogging about the exciting news or will it be just another event full of tweets about the good food in Chicago?  Dr. Younes has a very strong digital footprint and is clearly one of the most influential healthcare professionals online and is good about mixing up his post with solid content.  The challenge, as I learned after reading Dr. Vartabedian’s most recent post “Should Twitter be Restricted at Scientific Meetings?”, revolves around speaker-imposed restriction of Twitter at scientific presentations.

What I find refreshing is that doctors don’t approach social media looking for an ROI nor do they seem to be waiting for some formal FDA approval they are becoming more and more present because of their desire to educate.  I believe these doctors are pioneers in this digital world by strategically providing their point of view in their industry without interfering with their professional day job.

So, as the week in Chicago comes to a close let’s hope the digital sharing takes a positive step forward and we see an increase in the share of healthcare professionals driving meaningful conversations online.

As my colleague Priya noted in the beginning of May, Facebook has been planning to make changes  that would block the disabling of the wall on Facebook Pages. While many companies in the consumer space won’t even notice a chance, this has already caused quite a stir in the pharma space.

On May 17th, Facebook officially notified companies of the impending changes. Their rationale is that these “policy changes support consistency for the Facebook Pages product and encourage an authentic dialogue between people and businesses on Facebook.”

What does this mean for the healthcare industry?

The immediate effect is that new company and unbranded Pages cannot disable the wall. Pages that currently have commenting disabled will no longer have this entitlement after August 15th.

Under the current guidance, Facebook is still allowing the wall to be disabled for Pages solely dedicated to a prescription drug, however there is no indication Facebook will not change this once the policy is finalized.

What are our options?

As Facebook finalizes the policy they are already enacting, we need to evaluate how to best leverage this platform for clients in regulated industries. With more than 600 million registered users, Facebook remains an effective way to reach key audiences. However there are ways to engage with consumers on Facebook outside of creating a Page. This includes working with third-party groups and organizations to support interaction on their Pages, leveraging targeted Facebook advertising to bring visitors off Facebook to branded sites, or working with internal legal/regulatory specialists to determine ways to participate using these new rules.

In the end, some hope/speculate that this policy will help shape outstanding guidance to help allow Pharma — and other regulated industries — to participate in these already ongoing conversations in a way to more transparently communicate with stakeholders.

As Pharmaceutical companies delve into executing more social media strategies and create presences on platforms such as Facebook, companies need to keep in mind anticipated changes that may shake things up. The latest being Facebook commenting changes.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article on a study that is rekindling some fierce debates about the central role that social media is taking in all aspects of healthcare.  Based on data contributed by 596 patients who all self reported outcomes through a community they belonged to on PatientsLikeMe in a Nature Biotechnology journal article - it is one of the most visible in a trend towards patients using the empowerment that social media tools have offered them, and using that power to add their voices into the previously untouchable realm of clinical research.

“Trialsourcing” is where patients conduct their own self reported research (often on new indications for existing medications) and share their results over social networks such as PatientsLikeMe. It is a controversial idea. After all, no one expects that patients would apply the same scientific rigor to the clinical trial process as professional scientists and researchers - so the results they find could be meaningless at best and actually harmful at worst.  Still, the approach is winning some high profile advocates for its potential. The WSJ article also quotes Dr. Lee Hartwell (a Nobel Prize-winning scientist at Arizona State University) opining that “the approach has tremendous potential.”

So will this be the wave of the future? There are at least a four key reasons why trialsourcing may be here to stay:

1. Patients are desperate for control. The thing about most serious medical conditions is that they tend to render patients powerless over their own outcomes. It is a frustrating position to be in. If you could self organize, create your own data and offer that up to research professionals and scientists in order to help them, however … that is empowering and liberating for patients.
2. Empowerment leads to better data. There is no doubt that a patient who is more invested in a particular trial or type of treatment will be far more likely to be more compliant with required dosages and taking necessary measurements at set intervals. In this sense, the data that patients self collect and self report may rival that of an “official” clinical trial if they are coached on all the right steps to take and data to measure.
3. Public data breaks down academic barriers. In the world of academics, sometimes the structure of funding and pressure to publish can lead to inefficiencies. In many cases there is a disincentive to share research and data before it is analyzed and findings can be published. Patients have none of these barriers … all they care about is getting better treatment options sooner rather than later. As a result, trailsourcing has the potential to enable collaboration on a level that can be hard within the confines of traditional academic research.
4. Data can be globalized. One major challenge with clinical trials is to get enough diversity in the participating population to ensure that the treatments developed will be equally effective on patients from ethnic minority groups. In many cases, this diverse type of data simply doesn’t exist. If patients can share their data across geographic boundaries, all of a sudden data can be collected in a truly global way and new pools of data from diverse ethnic populations can be gathered and used by scientific researchers to validate data and conclusions they are already working on.

Earlier this month, Facebook launched a page for journalists intended to serve as an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories.

While the opportunities for media outlets to expand their social footprint beyond Twitter and on-site share functionality is clear, I see larger implications in the impact of more individual journalists leveraging Facebook for the development of stories.

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One of the biggest issues holding the pharmaceutical industry back from greater participation in social media has often been the issue of presenting the product’s fair balance. For those not in the industry, fair balance is that long list of side effects  and warnings about a prescription drug (you know — that usually include diarrhea and constipation) that the FDA mandates the company include when they say what the drug actually does/is for (the indication).

Because the full text of the fair balance needs to accompany the indication, it makes it hard to put prescription where it can be shared, since the company doesn’t have full control about how much information the company shares.  For example, when you post a link on Facebook, you are limited to just a few lines of text about the product - not enough for the full fair balance, something that has gotten companies such as Novartis in trouble with the FDA. As they say in the George S. Kaufman play from the 1930’s, you can’t take it with you.

What makes me optimistic is that companies are developing innovative tools that WILL let you take the fair balance with the user.

One tool I came across recently is Share. Send. Save. What this tool does is lets the site owner (the pharmaceutical company or healthcare provider) post a bar that says  above content that let’s a user share the information via a social network, email, or as a favorite in their browser without any of the indication, removing the need all together  for the balance, or send an e-mail with the full fair balance included.

What it does:

• Keeps standard metadata intact.
• Enables consistent sharing of only specified content and images across selected channels.
• Sends secure e-mails that can include detailed safety information.

Another tool I’ve recently started hearing a lot about is CMP.LY, which looks to have a lot of promise with Twitter. CMP.LY (read as “comply”)  lets a company set up custom disclosures and codes that can be used to identify any material connections, such as a product indication) in their own blog posts, tweets or other communications. When they are present, the tool presents the user with the required safety warnings, side effects or official links with information.

Other tools are in development as well, but it makes me optimistic that pharma and healthcare brands will be able to engage with their consumers in the social media channels they use to get health information, while still abiding by required regulation. I’m sure we’ll see more of these tools rolling out over the next few months.

According to a PRWeek article, the FDA has officially delayed releasing guidelines for social media, once again. As our team has shared before, social media guidelines are simply not a priority (at least until 2013) for the FDA. Waiting for these guidelines to come is akin to sitting in a busy hospital ER after a major accident waiting to get treated for a skinned knee … you’ll be waiting a while.

Now is the time to face a reality that most Pharma brands have never really admitted to themselves … that guidelines are unlikely to come anytime soon simply because it is not urgent for the FDA to focus on. In the meantime, the FDA will continue to prioritize the more important activities they are responsible for - and any significant guidance is unlikely to come in the near future until something forces the FDA to treat this as a more urgent request.

This lack of guidance has meant that pharma brands are forced to operate in the dark when it comes to social media. The lack of guidance has led to many misunderstandings and angst over warning letters sent for digital marketing efforts, and as a result many valuable patient education efforts have been stalled in the hopes that guidelines would be coming soon.

Most thought leaders working in social media for pharma brands will share that there is already a way to use social networks and tools to offer value to patient communities, support HCP communications and otherwise make a positive impact in communications. The lesson any pharma brand should take from this latest delay is that waiting for some guidelines is no longer a viable alternative to moving ahead with the strategic use of social media.

It’s time to move on.

South by Southwest Interactive - Health Track

With the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive taking place this week, the Internet is buzzing with chatter about the presentations that will be taking place. While there are a number of great reasons to go to SXSW, I’m personally excited about the number of sessions focusing on social media and healthcare.

This year sessions range from working with user generated content in healthcare, social healthcare and appropriate uses of social media (no, I will not “like” your hemorrhoid Cream on Facebook) to exploring the  doctor/patient relationship online.

I’ll be updating this column next week with my take on SXSWi’s healthcare track and what I’ve taken away from this year’s festival.

Are you attending SXSW this year for healthcare? Which sessions are you looking forward to and why?

App fever is everywhere and healthcare certainly hasn’t been immune to its effect (um, puns intended). Early apps in the healthcare space tended to focus on dumping huge amounts of data into searchable dictionaries for everything from drug names to conditions and symptoms. Those were useful a small number of times, but for the average person they offered fairly little. Fast forward to 2011, and there are plenty of examples of a bright future for using apps in every aspect of healthcare, from taking a small role in treatment, to mobile screenings, to joining a network of people skilled in providing healthcare so you can be “on call” at any moment to save another life.

Here are just a few of the most interesting apps that are now getting popular and are worth paying attention to for anyone in healthcare marketing considering developing an app strategy of their own:

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Most trend predictions that forecast beyond a year into the future are doomed to inaccuracy simply because of the pace of change and unpredictability of innovation. The rightfully skeptic among us are therefore likely to condemn a report that promises to predict how the world might look in 2020 as a work of optimistic fiction at best, and an exercise overstretched vanity at worst. That was the lens I brought to a report that some colleagues of mine at Ogilvy CommonHealth recently shared with me called 202020 VISION, a digital-health report outlining 20 scenarios of what digitally driven healthcare might look like in 2020. The report is surprisingly brilliant.

Reading through the scenarios, it was easy to imagine a distant future where technology and healthcare finally begin to work together to create a better world of care for us all. Though we cannot share the full report here (see the bottom of this post for details on how to get the full report), this post highlights seven of the most powerful ideas from the report along with some potential implications for anyone in marketing and communications. continue reading