Pharma 2.0

Today we profile a real-life example of Big Pharma supporting patient education and interaction through social media. Bristol-Myers Squibb provided unrestricted funding to facilitate the launch of a new site for women with advanced breast cancer.

The Advanced Breast Cancer Community launched in early September offering both an information gateway and social network for the advanced/metastatic breast cancer community. Why another site dedicated to cancer? Because those living with advanced breast cancer have had no single site to call their own. A wealth of information exists for these women but it is often buried within sites making it cumbersome and exhausting to find.

The new site is their gateway. As one user commented, “Early on in my diagnosis I perused many Internet sites that just left me more confused, scared and depressed than I already was. So I gave up looking. Until something brought me to this site just yesterday. What a great place. I can tell already that this is the place where I want to hang out.”

The Advanced Breast Cancer Community is built on tools from Inspire, a company that creates and manages online health communities in partnership with dozens of leading nonprofits, e.g. Arthritis Foundation, WomenHeart, National Osteoporosis Foundation.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the initiative is that it involved buy-in from 13 non-profit organizations! See the list of participating breast cancer patient advocacy organizations below.

AdvancedBC.org
Breast Cancer Network of Strength (formerly Y-Me)
Breastcancer.org
Breast Cancer Research Foundation
CancerCare
The Linda Creed Foundation
Living Beyond Breast Cancer
Metastatic Breast Cancer Network
SHARE
Sisters’ Network
Susan G. Komen for the Cure
The Wellness Community
Young Survival Coalition