This is my first stab at blogging. It’s taken a while to find a topic that I was interested in writing about consistently, but finally I have. Over the past year I have immersed myself in the world of social media, particularly as it relates to healthcare. The number of health-related social networks, blogs, videos and wikis is astounding. Even more so is the level of trust they inspire and the depth of personal information patients share with each other online. While patients still turn to their doctors (when they can reach them), they are also increasingly turning to each other to discuss medications, treatments, symptoms and more.
What is happening online today is very different than what we experienced in the early days of the Internet – remember the term eHealth? The early eHealth sites were information aggregators, primarily one-way in nature. They did not encourage interaction among site participants. Today’s sites are the opposite, all about community, conversations, collective wisdom and UCG (user generated content).
So where does pharma fit into all of this? Traditionally the pharmaceutical industry has been a sizable funder of web-based activities through sponsorships, online CME, unbranded disease sites and branded product sites. According to eMarketer (April 2008), online ad spending will reach $1.2 billion in 2008 and nearly double to $2.2 billion by 2011. Indeed without support from the pharma industry, many health sites would have failed.
Today’s web, however, poses new challenges for pharma marketers. Dialogue is happening all over the Internet - patients talk about drugs in online videos, physicians discuss products they have used (and perhaps disliked) on blogs, parents post information (and misinformation) about childhood vaccines in social networks. In the old days, pharma could control the message; today that is neither possible nor desirable.
So then how and when should pharma engage? The goal of this blog is to address that question. We will explore specifics related to social media and identify how industry (pharma, biotech and medtech) to can engage successfully and meaningfully. We will look at specific examples of programs that are launched, interview industry leaders, talk to CEO’s of interesting social media companies, examine the regulatory environment, capture insights from patient opinion leaders and highlight relevant data.
In the true spirit of Web 2.0, please join me as co-creators of this blog. Send ideas, comments, let me know if you’d like to write a post. Email me at bellerin@interbrandwood.com.
Bunny Ellerin
The data suggest that blogs and discussion forums are becoming more visible to consumers searching for specific brands as well as treatments related to the therapeutic category. I connected with v-Fluence v.p. Lance Helgeson who provided me with more insights. He made the point that while the numbers of search returns for social media sites are still relatively small, their influence appears to be disproportionately large. “Due to the popularity of a given blog or forum, the dynamics of Web 2.0, the degree to which influencers (like reporters) pay attention to them, and their increasing encroachment into Web 1.0 search results, their influence can be profound.”
