• Social Media for Pharma - SOLD OUT! (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers - 5 Seats Left (Feb 24, 2009)

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue

The following is a guest post by John Mack, Editor & Publisher of Pharma Marketing News

Virtually all pharmaceutical company Twitter accounts post mostly corporate news. These corporate Twitter accounts are not likely to be followed by patients. An analysis by Phil Baumann offered some proof that this is indeed the case (see “Do Normal People Follow Big Pharma On Twitter?”; http://bit.ly/9YJrxf).

Novo Nordisk, which has a Levemir-branded Twitter account (Race with Insulin), is the exception. However, that account so far has focused only on marketing and posting the daily trials, tribulations, and hopefully victories of Charlie Kimball, a Levemir-branded spokesperson with diabetes and racecar driver.

Twitter has often been hyped as a great way to support customers. The customers of pharma are physicians and patients. But even pharma branded Twitter accounts like Race with Insulin offer very little in terms of patient support.

A branded, patient-focused Twitter account can be used in many ways to support patients. Such a Twitter account can deliver appropriate messages to followers who opt-in to follow via notices on the brand.com web site. Because of the viral nature of Twitter, one follower can lead to many more with very little extra effort or expense on the part of the sponsoring pharma company. If the posts are relevant to patient needs, followers will RT (re-tweet) and recommend that others follow.

Kru Research has written up a nice review of this topic in the eBook: Using Twitter for e-Patient Communications (http://tinyurl.com/cwqfza).

What do you think? Should pharma companies use Twitter for patient support? If so, what types of applications would work best? I’ve prepared a survey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NJGDXDX) that asks your opinion of using Twitter in this fashion and what you think would be the regulatory, corporate cultural, training, and other barriers that would need to be overcome to achieve success.

Specifically, the survey asks how effective Twitter can be in carrying out each of the following patient support activities/communications:

• Drug/device safety alerts (eg, drug recalls, medical device malfunctions, emerging safety issues)
• Prescription management, including pharmacy refill reminders
• Daily health tips from authoritative sources
• Publishing disease-specific tips
• Clinical trial awareness & recruitment
• Enhancing health-related support groups (e.g. buddy-systems for depression)
• Providing around-the-clock disease management
• Patient-sharing of health-related experiences
• Issuing dietary/lifestyle tips
• Delivering adherence and compliance messages

Please take 2 minutes to answer this survey about how effective Twitter can be in carrying patient support activities/communications. Take the survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NJGDXDX
You will be able to see a summary of up-to-date de-identified results upon completion of the survey.

Results of this survey may be summarized in an issue of Pharma Marketing News.

Your comments are confidential (anonymous) unless you specifically provide your contact information at the end of the survey and allow us to attribute comments to you personally.

John Mack, Editor & Publisher
Pharma Marketing News/Pharma Marketing Blog

If you thought you were ahead of the game because you have a broadband internet connection at home or wireless on the road, The Pew Internet Project has news for you - the rest of the country is catching up. Americans in all demographics are rapidly adopting broadband and wireless, with 60% of people surveyed reporting that they’re using broadband and over half connecting wirelessly.

Overall Internet Usage Holds Steady

Pew’s most recent survey on internet, broadband, and cell phone usage took place in November and December 2009, and for the first time included interviews in Spanish. The survey found that 74% of adults in the US use the internet. Note that this is a slight drop from the same survey conducted in April 2009 which found 79% of English speaking Americans to be online.

Other findings did not vary significantly between the surveys. Both found that about 60% of adults (60% in December 2009 vs 63% in April) use broadband connections at home, and that 55% of adults in the country use wireless connections ( WiFi or WiMax) to connect from their smart phones or laptops.

Looking at the findings of Pew’s survey of internet use over the past 15 years, you can see that the number of Americans using the web has increased dramatically. And also that growth has slowed.

Wireless and Broadband Take Off

For example, overall internet usage has leveled off (73% in 2006 compared to 74% today), leading Pew to conclude that there has been “little significant growth” in the population of people using the Internet since 2006. Broadband usage in that same period, however, has increased considerably from less than half of all households being wired for broadband in 2006 to a near 60% in 2009.

Use of wireless connections is not far behind, with 55% of surveyed Americans using wireless at least occasionally. Among the 46% of the population who own a laptop 83% use Wi-Fi. The increasing trend toward internet access from everywhere is ongoing, and there is still plenty of room for growth. Although over 80% of those surveyed use mobile phones, only 35% have used their phones to access online content.

Who’s Using What?

When broken into demographic groups, Pew’s findings fall into predictable patterns. Among the 2,258 American adults who participated in the phone survey, internet use and use of broadband and wireless connections, correlated with youth, wealth, and higher levels of education.

People in households with incomes greater than $75,000 a year, college graduates, and people in the 18-29 age range have much higher wireless internet use rates than others in those groups. Suburban and urban populations also showed higher rates of use (56% and 57% respectively), to the 45% of wireless users found in rural areas.

It might seem intuitive that the expense of laptops and online services would create the biggest barrier to internet and broadband access for low income users. However, it turns out that the biggest determining factor is education. Of those without a high school degree, a mere 39% are online, compared to 60% of people in the lowest income group.  The only group that uses the Internet less is those over the age of 65. When it comes to broadband use, only 24% of those without a high school degree report using broadband connections, as compared to 46% for high school graduates, and 83% for those who graduated from college.

Putting it All Together

The big picture numbers show us that 3 out of every 4 people are online, and more and more are using wireless and high-speed broadband technologies. This is great news for people searching for health information, support, or communities online. And great news for health communicators, support networks, and others who want to reach them. But there are still gaps to be filled. Assuming these findings apply to the populations of e-patients, caregivers, and other digital health consumers, there are a lot of less affluent, less educated people that need health-related support and can’t access it online.

This new, free 40-page guide for health marketers and communicators has just been released. In Using Twitter for e-Patient Communications you’ll get:

• Social Media for Pharma (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers (Feb 24, 2009)
• January e-Patient Connections Distance Learning & Briefing (By invitation only; limited to Kru alumni and clients)
  • Friday January 29, 2010 * 1pm EST * Dial-in info to be emailed

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue.

• Social Media for Pharma (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers (Feb 24, 2009)
• January e-Patient Connections Distance Learning & Briefing
  • Invitation only; e-Patient Connections alumni and Kru clients
  • Friday January 29, 2010 * 1pm EST * Dial-in info to be emailed

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue.

Imagine a social community site consisting only of your family, friends, and loved ones; where a person suffering from cancer or Parkinson’s Disease can gather a tight-knit support group in one location, offering a space to provide updates and commiserations, information and explanations, without the risk of that too-public feeling that sometimes accompanies large public sites like Facebook.

For many e-patients, the allure of connectivity is mitigated by a desire for privacy and respectful distance. Anyone who’s experienced a serious illness knows that the comfort of sympathy and condolences is balanced by the tedious duty of explaining, often over and over, what is going wrong, why it’s going wrong, and what’s going to happen.

CareFlash “Care Communities”

CareFlash, created by self-described “recovering CFO” Jay Drayer, attempts to address these concerns by offering patients private and secure social networks with features designed to make the relationship between patients, caregivers, and well-wishers as streamlined as possible. A simple e-mail based blog system allows patients to keep their network of supporters up to date, and integration with the iHelp Calendar lets everyone involved coordinate needed involvement and assistance, including visiting hours and errands.

The site also offers a wide variety of animated videos explaining the diagnosis and treatments of a number of diseases, ranging from hypertension to macular degeneration. The videos, which are produced by Blausen Medical, are offered in a number of languages, and have proved incredibly popular. “Many doctors tend to explain diagnoses and recommended courses of action using plastic models…white boards and brochures,” said Drayer. “This commonly leaves people with only a vague understanding of the associated diagnosis, anatomy, and treatment. It’s more common than I ever would expect that we hear from people that they never had a comprehensive grasp on their diagnosis until they viewed the associated treatment.”

New Solutions for New Demographics

These videos are just one of the appealing aspects of the site. Just as Blausen’s animations provide confused patients with a clearer understanding of their conditions, CareFlash offers a social space to a demographic profile that may not be comfortable with Facebook or Twitter. As Drayer says, “Participants in Care Communities tend to be most representative as being the parents and grandparents of the Facebook generation.” By granting users their own private mini-sites, with greater control over who is allowed access, users can bypass media-hyped worries about privacy, spam, and viruses.

CareFlash has also made in-roads into non-English speaking groups. Drayer attributes the popularity of his project among ESL families to the multilingual options offered by the site’s videos. These families may face challenges in getting explanations of complex healthcare concepts from primarily English-speaking hospital staff, and the site offers them an alternative.  Most of the videos are currently available in Spanish, Dutch, Hungarian and Arabic, and Drayer plans to expand user options to at least ten options by early 2011.  In addition, well over 10% of the site’s population is located in the eastern hemisphere.

Big Ideas, Small Scale

We can see from these cases that making small allowances in terms of user functionality, such as allowing private, tightly user-controlled communities, and offering multiple language options, can allow a site to bridge the gap between typically “wired” demographics and other groups.

Hopefully this appeal will continue as CareFlash expands. The site is currently monetized through advertisements and private-label Care Communities offered to various healthcare entities. Drayer has in mind a “rich development roadmap” for the future, including many features suggested by users.

Race driver Charlie Kimball and Ambre Morley of Novo Nordisk Talk Twitter
(20 minutes) watch video

Suppose you’re  trying to kick off the new decade right by resolving to stop smoking, or lose a little weight. Noble goals, sure, but easier said than done. The treadmill gathers dust, the fast-food drive-through beckons, you swear to just one cigarette after work; sometimes, you need a little something more than pure willpower. And unfortunately, while Jillian Michaels on the TV show The Biggest Loser seems like a fine health coach, she isn’t going to meet us weekly with personalized advice.

Coaching has traditionally been a face-to-face affair. You’d make an appointment, typically based on when the professional was available to see you. You’d drive, to an office or a gym, interact with the coach for an hour or two, and then be on your own for the rest of the week. Phone coaching, has in some ways broadened the flexibility of the practice, but it still leaves much to be had in terms of freedom and in-the-moment help.

Could internet and web 2.0 technologies, which emphasize mobility, constant connectivity, and a more democratic attitude towards communication hierarchies, kick-start a revolution in the way healthcare and wellness coaching operates?

From “IT” to “RT”

Hummingbird Coaching thinks so. The company, founded in 1997 and offering its services to numerous corporations including Motorola and Proctor & Gamble, offers wellness coaching using e-mail and text message (i.e., SMS) platforms. According to the “Hummingbird Coaching 2.0″ white paper, several studies have shown that despite the initial impression of cold impersonality implied by a purely text-based relationship, online coaching is just as effective, if not more so, than face-to-face support.

Some of the arguments will no doubt sound familiar to anyone keeping up with the progress of the e-patient movement. As Hummingbird puts it, internet innovations of the past decade and a half have steered away from the “information technology” label to something more appropriately called “relationship technology.” By harnessing the potential of today’s almost-constantly connected online culture, coaching can move away from the compartmentalized domain of weekly face-to-face appointments and become an instantly accessible resource built on “teachable moments.”

Beyond Exercise Advice

The service’s website also touts the generally high standards of training and education of its coaches. There is no regulation or official certification for the increasingly popular “health and wellness coach” profession which causes some to look at this trend with some skepticism. Hummingbird coaches predominantly have Masters degrees and at least 3 years experience in a “behavior change” profession.

Coaches don’t just provide health information or exercise encouragement; they dig deeper into each client’s psyche using principles of the Positive Psychology movement. They help each client explore her own unique drivers of pleasure, engagement, and meaning and use this to “help clients balance their lives.”

High Touch, High Tech

There is a growing body of evidence that health and wellness coaches do improve the health outcomes of their clients. Unfortunately, like many good health solutions, it doesn’t have a reimbursement code so it exists as a practice completely separate and independent from the physician practice.

While many corporate wellness programs have some form of health education or phonable advisers, Hummingbird offers a unique and promising glimpse of a future that is both high touch and high tech. Each client has a real person as a coach, and through text messaging and email interactions, the service is more efficient and effective for everyone.

Andrea Williams’ first reaction to finding out she was HIV positive was to say “I’m going to have to live with it, not die from it.” Andrea is a community health-worker in Brooklyn who has been living with HIV since 1993. It isn’t always easy, but she stresses the importance of attitude, of forcing yourself through the hardest passages. After all, with a husband and kids, a close-knit support group and her career, she has a lot to live for.

Andrea’s story is one of several on Boehringer-Ingelheim’s recently launched HIV/AIDS resource website “Mind, Body, HAART.” It’s an information portal for HIV/AIDS patients, professionals, and educators. The site is primarily unbranded; although the BI logo  appears on page footers, there is no overt product logos or ads. As is common with unbranded marketing sites, there are many links that will of course transfer to their branded product site Viramune.com.

The site’s information structure is comprised of three discreet sections, one for each intended target audience (patients, physicians, educators). However, the navigation itself is a bit confusing as links from one section lead to portions of other sections, the section landing pages don’t seem to path to the drop down sections, and some content seems accessible only by digging through numerous links.

The patient education section is robust and uses online video very effectively. Highlights include a 3D animation of HIV replication, and physician and patient interviews. Each video has an accompanying transcript for those who would prefer to read rather than watch, or to print and save the information. Additionally there are a variety of tip sheets and fact sheets and other PDF documents available to download, and a page of links to other web resources. The site’s interactive elements are limited to a “Locate an HIV test site” widget from the CDC and a poll that asks, “On average, how well would you say you handle stress?”

There is great use of video and if this site were launched in the year 2000 it would have been really awesome–but it’s 2010. Any effort to provide health information on an unbranded platform should be welcomed, but Mind, Body, HAART falls short of its potential. Hopefully the site producers only suffered from too small a budget too tight a deadline and not from lack of vision or social savvy. Perhaps this version of the site is really just the phase I of great things to come. Specific areas for improvement include:

1) A site designed just for patients — this is arguable and there are many benefits to a single URL for all audiences. But it is far better to create a patient-targeted site that can be fully optimized, while at the same time simplifying the content architecture.

2) Post the videos on YouTube and other places — they’ve already been paid for, why not cross post them to YouTube, the second biggest search engine on the web?

3) Go social — this site is a “web 1.0″ information portal. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it wouldn’t be hard to take it social in a few simple ways. There are no Mind Body HAART profiles (or Viramune ones for that matter) on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks. A daily broadcast of HAART information on Twitter, similar to how various CDC channels provide health education could bring new and valuable information to many, and provide an invitation to visit the site. Thinking bigger, maybe the site would benefit from a custom patient community.

4) Add a sharebar — while there is a “share this” link on the site, it simply provides a form to send an email to a friend. That’s good, but what about a sharebar that lets people share on Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, or 300 other sites with just 2 clicks?

5) Make more search engine friendly — for a site that has the title “Living with HIV/AIDS” it was surprising that the word AIDS doesn’t appear in any of the keyword metatags on any of the pages (HIV does, but not AIDS). Also, the site was built with developer-friendly java-script code, but it results in SEO unfriendly URL’s like “http://mindbodyhaart.com/mbh/index.jsp?path=patient/default.xml” which is actually the url for the landing page for the main patient section. Plain word url’s with hyphen separation between words is a good practice to keep Dr. Google happy.

According to BI in their press release, “The goal of the site is to help enhance HIV/AIDS care and treatment by fostering an open dialogue.”  But it’s hard to have a dialogue when you’re the only one talking.

How J&J Joined the Twittersphere
Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson
(14 minutes) watch video