Be prepared.

Visit the site.

View the videos.

Know the issues.

Read the write-up in Med Ad News.

Starting today, the FDA will be holding a 2-day hearing on how pharmaceutical companies use the web and social-media tools to market their products. Sixty-two speakers from pharmaceutical companies, media companies, agencies, and others have been asked to give their viewpoints.

Is it a little too late? Maybe. Is it a step in the right direction? Probably. Will the FDA, pharma and marketers have a better understanding on what needs to be done to regulate the internet and social media? Likely. Whatever the outcome, it’s about time.

Follow all of the action (via real-time tweets) at www.fdasm.com.

Or listen to the streaming webcast courtesy of the FDA at http://www.capitolconnection.net/capcon/fda/111209/FDAlive.htm.

After nearly 2 weeks of feasting on Halloween candy, we still have few post-halloween treats to share with everyone.

My, how far CME has come in the age of technology! It seems like just yesterday that CME was in the infancy stage of being offered through websites and portals. But now with the advent of ReachMD and its unique XM Radio/iPhone/social media approach to CME, physicians truly have a wide range of mediums to increase their knowledge. And it doesn’t stop there. According to the Bernard Sklar’s CME List their are more than 300 CME sites/portals/apps/podcasting available through the internet today compared to 87 just 10 years ago. And when you look at the physician participants from that time frame the numbers have increased by more than 4 million (181,922 to 4,365,013).

So where are all of these physicians spending most of their time? The top 30 CME sites (according to #hours available) are below.

The Top 30 CME Sites (according to the number of hours offered)

1.    Contemporary Forums-Online CE Library
2.   Audio Digest
3.   Challenger Online Lecture Hall
4.   CMEWeb
5.   Medscape CME Center
6.   Virtual Lecture Hall
7.   Clinical Directors Network (CDN)
8.   Pri-Med Online
9.   NetCE Continuing Education on the Internet
10.  American Society for Clinical Pathology
11.   RSNA (Radiological Soc North America)
12.   TheAnswerPage
13.   Practical Reviews Online
14.   CardioVillage
15.   Sullivan Group (The)
16.   theheart.org
17.   CME Institute
18.   CMELectures.org
19.   Oncologist (The)
20.  Harvard Online CME
21.   Drexel MCP Hahnemann Virt Grand Rounds
22.   MedRisk Online
23.   Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Courses
24.   American Acad Ped PREP Self-Ass Online
25.   Neurology (J American Acad Neurology)
26.   Washington University (St Louis)
27.   Children’s of Minnesota Grand Rounds
28.   FreeCME
29.   NEJM Weekly CME Program
30.   American Acad of Orthopaedic Surgery OKO

Attention healthcare industry! Mobile healthcare solutions will be a reality sooner than you think. And we aren’t talking about just blood pressure monitoring apps, but full-blown health services.

According to a new study conducted by wireless industry association CTIA with Harris Interactive, a vast majority of the US (78%) is interested in mobile health solutions and 15 percent of the U.S. is extremely or very interested in learning more about mHealth.

The study used a combination of two online studies of U.S. adults (5,563) and physicians (115 general practitioners and 129 specialists) to gauge their interest in mHealth service options.  Survey respondents felt that access to mHealth would allow for more home-based care (68%), make medical care easier to obtain (51%), and give patients more freedom and choice (51%). More highlights are below.

Read the full report here.

Plus a few more. If you are a non-believer in the effect of social media on the media landscape check out socialnomics. If you are a believer, then what you may not know is how other mediums are changing for the better or worse. Introducing, Did you know 4.0.

Every brand manager, marketing director, CMO, account person and creative wants to know -  what makes the perfect ad? Is it the headline or the visual? What about that brilliant logo? Maybe it’s the call-to-action or the tagline that keeps them coming back for more? Or that one design element that caused you to stop in your tracks and stand at attention?

Whatever it may be, the folks at Business Week (Steve McKee) have created a simple list to tell you what it shouldn’t be:

1. Boring. Yep, boring. Why do we watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, or go online? Three reasons: information, entertainment, and engagement. Ads that fail to offer at least two of these three benefits flop.

2. Boorish. You shouldn’t think of your advertising as being about your brand, you should think of it as an extension of your brand (see “A Practical Guide to Branding”). If it’s loud, annoying, insulting, offensive, or self-centered, people will think the same of your products or services (see “The Cocktail Party Test for Advertising”).

3. Safe. If you worry too much about offending someone, you’re likely to not attract anyone.

4. Trying to do too much. The best an ad can do is communicate one single, compelling idea, and in the age of the Internet—when people know they can go online to get all the additional information they need—it’s crazy to ask an ad to do more than that.

5. Fixing a non-advertising problem. A common mistake many companies make is trying to use advertising to fix another problem. It may be faulty or outdated product design, an uncompetitive cost structure, customer service letdowns, or any number of other things. It’s not as if they do so intentionally; it’s just that it’s a whole lot easier to put on a new coat of paint than it is to fix the foundation that’s causing the drywall to crack.

Read Steve’s full list here.

Recent studies have shown that friends behave similarly. In fact, if our friends buy something, there’s a better-than-average chance we’ll buy it, too.  Obviously, this is a great insight for marketers, but may even be more important for the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare in general.

In a recent Wired Magazine Article, Johnathan Leher explains  how a group of patients from a Farmingham, MA study might demonstrate how relationships directly influence behavior and thus health and happiness.

The Framingham Heart Study, started in 1948, comprised of 5,124 male and female subjects and has revealed many of the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, including smoking and hypertension. Data from the study combined with recorded family and friend information of the patients led Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and internist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego, to develop a social network that spanned 60 years. Some of the findings are below:

Obesity

Smoking

Simple and effective. More classics can be found at AdViews.

This blog is full of information about social media, including SmartPhone apps, Twitter, and others, and S&R decided to take this topic to the physicians to find out their thoughts on social media.

The S&R Communications Group Social Media Survey was conducted on July 20, 2009, via SermoTM, an online community for physicians. The purpose of this survey was to gather information about the personal and professional use of social media by physicians. The survey was administered to 102 physicians and was directed at physicians in the specialty areas of family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, and psychiatry. The survey contained 18 questions on various topics that ranged from basic demographics to use of specific social media sites.

One of the most important pieces of information gathered with this survey was not a surprise: Some physicians do use social media professionally.

Who uses it?

Of the 79 respondents (77.5%) who reported using social media professionally, 72.2% were 25 to 35 years in age. (The other 27.8% were 36 to 55. No one over the age of 55 participated in this survey.)

How do they use it?

Like any other tactical tool, social media will not be effective for every physician or every situation. The majority of respondents reported using social media to connect with physicians within their specialty (87.3%), to connect with physicians outside of their specialty (64.6%), to connect with colleagues they trained with (54.4%), to connect with medical school alumni (53.2%), and to connect with key opinion leaders (21.5%).

Interestingly, only 2.5% reported using social media to connect with patients, which suggests that physicians do not see social media as a viable means of communicating with patients. Why is this?

Perhaps the answer lies in the benefits respondents see in or their reasons for using social media professionally. Because the majority of physicians see social media as a means of gaining professional information, it is reasonable to expect that very few respondents would use social media as a means of communicating with patients. Plus, respondents, even those who reported not using social media professionally, reported that the 2 largest downsides to using social media professionally were issues of privacy (69.6%) and legal concerns (52%). Other downsides included concerns over credibility, time requirements, the impersonal nature of social media, and incongruence with their ideals of being professional.

At the moment, physicians must be careful about interacting with patients via social media. However, social media presents the opportunity to satisfy the demand for more immediate information and to correct mistakes quickly. Doctors already use non–face-to-face methods like letters, phone calls, etc. It may only be a matter of time before social media falls into this same category.

What can we learn from this survey?

As the world of pharmaceutical advertising is changing, we have to change with it. This survey confirms what we already knew: Social media will play an important part in pharmaceutical advertising. This survey indicates that social media is a source for information for physicians, so we know that we have the opportunity to create a place where we can build relationships with physicians while rapidly providing education, information, and the ability to interact with KOLs and other physicians.

In fact, more than 50% of respondents reported that they would be in favor of additional social media designed for better professional interaction with patients and other healthcare professionals.

As they always have, physicians are turning to their colleagues for information, and you have a responsibility to your product to participate in this conversation and ensure that accurate, factual, and complete information is being presented to the physicians who are seeking out that information.

Contact Wayne Dunlap (wayned@srcomgroup.com) for a full report.