Filed under: physician | Tags: biotech, interactive, manhattan research, medical devices, nurses, online, Patients, pharma
According to a new study by Manhattan Research, approximately three out of four U.S. nurses recommend health websites to patients. The study, Taking the Pulse® Nurses v9.0, focuses on which technologies nurses have adopted, how they are currently using them, and how they plan to use them in the future.
It was noted that nurses are very savvy when it comes to using technology for health, averaging eight hours per week online for professional purposes. Nurses are also proactive in researching medical product information specifically online – over eighty percent have visited a pharma, biotech, or device company website in the past year. Merck, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi-Aventis have the corporate sites most visited by nurses.
So what does this mean for your brand? That nurses remain a key target for your promotional efforts.
Read the report here.
Filed under: mobile | Tags: Apps, creative, google, h1n1, influenza a, interactive, iPhone, mobile, sanofi-aventis, smartphone, swine flu, twitter
With news that Sanofi-Aventis has submitted a supplemental application with the FDA to get a license for its influenza A (H1N1) monovalent vaccine, it’s the perfect time to revisit what other apps (smartphone) have been submitted for review for help against the H1N1 virus.
Back in April, the swine flu craze was taking the world by storm, and useful applications and interactive tools were being introduced on a daily basis to make sure that the world was kept in a state of calm/paranoia. Although some are more useful than others, the results prove that creative and effective tools can be developed for healthcare issues in record time.
Here are some of the contenders:
Apps
Swine Flu Tracker – An iPhone app developed by IntuApps
allows you to see the current Threat Level for the disease, a map showing confirmed and suspected cases, a symptoms area to inform people, and an alert page for breaking news on Swine Flu.
Swine Flu Map - An iPhone app developed by Andrea Albani displays the current spread of the H1N1 virus on a map and allows you to view global and local locations to pinpoint specific cases.
Maps and trends
Google Flu Trends – A trends tool which uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.
Health Map – Interactive map that tracks the latest world-wide swine flu outbreaks through the use of Google Maps.
Swine Flu Twitter Tracker – Allows you to track the latest swine flu outbreaks using real-time Tweets and Goggle Maps.
Filed under: interactive, pharmaceutical marketing | Tags: brand, e-detail, interactive, pharma company, product, reprasentative, s&r communications group, web, webinar
by Mark Kocourek, Executive Vice President, S&R Communications Group
The March 2009 issue of Medical Marketing & Media came with a great supplement entitled The Interactive Guide. It was full of discussion about the adoption of digital space by the pharma industry and what the future will bring. This supplement, coupled with the fact that my good friend and close colleague, Dave Recht, recently made a post about the importance of re-establishing the pharma sales representative as a resource for physicians, leads me to this posting. I’d like to extend the “useful resource” discussion to the use of web and electronic media in the promotion of pharmaceutical products.
Like it or not, the Web 2.0 and other interactive electronic media are the future of communication between pharma, healthcare professionals, and patients. Yet most pharma companies’ efforts in this area are hopelessly stuck in the 20th century, Web 1.0 era, and their offerings are nearly, if not totally, useless in the eyes of healthcare professionals and patients alike. Why? Because they are not even remotely interactive nor are they very helpful, resourceful, or innovative.
Take pharma product web sites for example. The vast majority of pharma product web sites look like they were built using a $29.95-do-it-yourself-web-site package purchased from CompuServe just before they went bust. The most interactive thing about the site is the Contact us button. Oh, and do you think you could add just a little more text to that home page? I mean is 25,000 words per page really enough?
Anyway I digress. But I do know this as a pharma product manager: in order to be successful with your online and electronic media initiatives, you have to be able to answer yes to 2 important questions.
1. Is the initiative truly interactive and innovative? Does it open the door to meaningful 2- way communication with your customers?
2. Will the initiative be viewed as a real resource and not just a big ol’ fat product advertisement?
Webinars are another example of a huge missed opportunity for continuing an interactive conversation with someone who is truly interested in your product. After all, the attendees took the time to participate in your webinar so they must have some interest in your product, right? Our experience shows that follow-up with this interested party leads to a big boost in ROI for the promotional spend. Yet very few pharma companies have any kind of plan for interaction and communication with attendees AFTER the webinar is over.
I could provide examples of missed opportunities all day long. Don’t even get me started on the “e-detailing initiatives” (read that as e-detailing MISTAKES) that most pharma companies are making. But that is a subject for another day.
A successful web and interactive media strategy is a process of careful planning, integration between initiatives, and, above all, imagination. It goes way beyond the “Web site? Yeah I got one. Checked that box” mentality that is so prevalent with pharma product managers today.
When we at S&R Communications Group discuss web and interactive media initiatives with our clients, we make sure that for each initiative the answer to the above questions is an unequivocal YES.
Can you?
