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Consumer health IT can dramatically impact patient care by facilitating such vital functions as medication management, remote patient monitoring, and tighter communication between patients and their care providers. The guide is particularly timely because in the next few years, health care providers will focus as never before on electronic linkages with their patients. Many hospitals and health systems have patient portals on the Internet, with access to rudimentary health record information, and perhaps the ability to e-mail physicians. Some offer mobile versions of those portals. But providers have so far been under no outside pressure to get patients to use those resources. Patient-oriented health IT is officially on the national agenda through the federal “meaningful use” program, which gives billions in cash incentives to providers for using IT to improve care (and in 2015 is scheduled to start penalizing holdouts by reducing their Medicare payments). The most recent set of criteria for meaningful use, to be phased in starting in 2014, requires an active effort to link patients into the information loop. Not only do providers have to make patients’ information available to them online, they also have to show that at least 5% of the patients have accessed that information in a given year. That percentage is likely to increase with the next round of meaningful use requirements.
Via nrip
Big data could transform the health-care sector, but the industry must undergo fundamental changes before stakeholders can capture its full value. A big-data revolution is under way in health care.
Via dbtmobile
With the rise of Social Media, we are seeing more and more professionals actively using different paltforms to connect and share. This infographic hig
In the privacy of their own bathrooms, people can find out whether they’re pregnant or have HIV. They can even swab for DNA to unravel their ancestry. Yet it’s difficult to answer simpler questions, like “Do I have the flu?” That’s because the most advanced diagnostic device in most medicine cabinets is a thermometer. Regularly measuring and understanding anything more complex than body temperature, such as respiratory rates and heart rhythms, is a physician’s job. So patients often go to the doctor when they don’t need to or don’t go when they should. By providing doctors with better data and patients with better decision-making tools, personal health monitors and diagnostics could break that cycle. In the last few years, medical-device manufacturers have begun using miniaturized sensors and mobile phones to gather clinical information. The AliveCor and iBGStar iPhone attachments, for example, monitor heart rhythm and blood glucose, respectively. The Tinké converts heart and respiratory rates into a stress rating. And devices that gather a broader range of metrics are on the way. The Scanadu Scout, a pocket-sized Bluetooth-enabled dongle that will be available later this year, uses several kinds of sensors, including infrared, to measure blood flow, blood oxygen, electrical heart activity, temperature, and heart rate. (The company is competing for the Tricorder X PRIZE, a competition to create the first no-contact mobile diagnostic tool.) The sheer volume of data produced by a network of devices like the Scanadu could be a boon for public-health workers. A person who tracks one health metric every hour will generate nearly four times the amount of data in the Library of Congress in his lifetime. Spread over several metrics and many people, the data could provide a snapshot of national or local health at any given time. Epidemiologists could use that information to spot early indicators of disease and issue alerts before the infection has a chance to spread. For individuals, personal data could be paired with software-based diagnostic tools. Patients with hypertension, for example, would be alerted to pressure spikes, which could enable them to better manage their condition with diet and exercise. Scanadu is developing apps that can analyze smartphone images of user-collected blood or urine samples and detect respiratory infections. The company plans to refine its software to synthesize a data sample, diagnose common ailments, and let patients know when they’re sick enough to need a doctor. For the first time, emergencies will be emergencies, and colds will be colds—and doctors won’t be the only people who can see the difference.
Identifying DOLs
Traditional social media monitoring approaches are now familiar to many pharmaceutical marketers and communicators. A set of keywords related to a particular topic is chosen, and used to program proprietary software to search for conversations including these keywords over a given time period. Results tend to include a large amount of noise or irrelevant mentions, as well as those by patients, HCPs and other groups of interest. For example, when searching around diabetes keywords, results such as the tweet below are often found in greater numbers than those referring to real clinical situations; the software is not capable of distinguishing between members of the public making a joke and the discussions of doctors or patients. Human analysis is then required to filter out the useful results, but the process can be imperfect, meaning that insights can be clouded or that key points and individuals can be missed. Figure 1: A popular tweet mentioning diabetes. Does your social media monitoring tool return large volumes of similarly irrelevant results? Creation Pinpoint is a new social media monitoring tool that cuts out the noise and allows those interested in the activity of HCPs to focus on the most important conversations taking place between doctors, pharmacists and nurses. Not only does this provide a more reliable picture of how a particular brand or therapy area is being discussed by those who are active in the area, but it also allows the identification of HCPs who are particularly influential online – the DOLs. These individuals are crucial when considering how a brand or therapy area is discussed online, as their posts and other activities influence others in the online – and offline – spaces. The following graphic shows the top 10 HCPs tweeting on a subset of topics related to prostate cancer. Through Creation Pinpoint, it is possible to identify specific conversations and to discover more about an individual, such as their location, Twitter profile and online influence scores. In this way, DOLs can be quickly and easily identified, and steps can be taken towards engaging with them in an appropriate and effective manner. Figure 2: Extract from Creation Pinpoint demo dashboard – the top 10 HCPs tweeting on a subset of prostate cancer topics in the past 6 months Figure 3: Detailed information about key HCPs is just a click away in Creation Pinpoint, enabling engagement and allowing you to improve the control you have over your brands online. Three groups of HCPs you need to be aware of Studies using Creation Pinpoint have so far identified three broad groups of HCPs active online, whose activities may be of interest to pharmaceutical companies. Social media big hitters – these are HCPs who have embraced online media, and may have several social media accounts. They are more likely to be generalists, or involved in medical education or leadership. Any posts they make online have impact within their large sphere of influence, with potential to spread further. These individuals may not have a specialist network, however, and are therefore less likely to post online extensively on a single topicSpecialists – this group may not have such sophisticated online profiles, and may only be active on a narrow range of topics. However, their activities in that area are credible, since this is where their professional focus lies. They are more likely to have a highly relevant discussion on a particular topic areaOne-hit wonders – these individuals fall into neither group, but they are shown to have had at least one, seemingly isolated, relevant conversation. Further monitoring may show that these users go on to have further conversations on the relevant topics Approaching the three groups...
Les médecins examinent les patients sur base de différents critères de coordination, mais de nombreux facteurs peuvent biaiser le diagnostic.
At the start of each year our US colleagues take a look at the key trends in the digital landscape and the opportunities they present in healthcare. For 2013,
An entry in the '100 Steps for Pharma' series Millions of words have been written over recent years across media channels about the relative performance of pharmaceutical companies in social enviro...
To many businesses and professionals, social media can seem frivolous–a place to upload photos of your dinner and your cat. But in reality, it is a powerful medium that simplifies the connection of people from all different locations. One industry that benefits greatly from this knowledge transfer is healthcare. All components–patients, doctors, healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical companies, etc.–can interact with one another and receive (hopefully) helpful information about health conditions. Currently, pharmaceutical marketers implement a few social tactics, mainly with the use of forums. There are three kinds of forums: branded (sponsored and monitored by a specific brand), non-branded (usually support groups, fundraisers or information-based platforms like WebMD), and healthcare professional communities. These forums are perfect for monitoring social conversation since they are all public updates. Large amounts of information can be aggregated about people’s health conditions, viable medications for cures and the demographics of certain ailments. As for social networks themselves, pharmaceutical companies can be found on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as blogs (sponsored and non-sponsored). These platforms are generally used for dispensing information about their companies, products and developing a positive brand image by promoting various philanthropy projects. In other words, there is a lot of opportunity for more engagement and creating educational communities online that benefit both the user and the company, similar to what the Mayo Clinic did with live tweet chats. There is no doubt that pharma marketers are diligent about putting information out about their various medications. But just as there is a potential for doctors to utilize social media to expand upon their craft, there is potential for pharmaceutical companies to improve business efficiency while still keeping the consumer in mind. Instead of waiting for the annual conference, doctors are able to access other professionals that are innovating new ways to cure, to operate and vaccinate in real-time. Imagine pharmaceutical companies joining in this transfer of knowledge by assessing what medicines are the most popular (and those on the decline), what symptoms are cropping up in certain areas and what doctors like prescribing most.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) might be changing to become “more business-friendly” in how it regulates mobile health, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. The article features interviews with participants at the Personalized Medicine World Conference. The FDA is one of three bodies with a hand in regulating wireless health in the US, along with the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission. Some executives in wireless health gripe about the level of regulation they face and claim it will inhibit the market’s growth. The FDA issued draft guidelines about regulating mobile apps back in July 2011, one of the proposals that have attracted criticism. However, Mavis Yee, a partner at a Silicon Valley law firm called Nixon Peabody, says the agency “has little to no interest in regulating the vast majority of the 40,000 or more mobile-health applications” that are available today. The agency only wants to regulate companies “building wireless accessories for existing medical devices, as well as those that turn a phone or tablet into a clinical medical device”, said Yee. The vast majority of apps do not fall into this category. They relate to diet, exercise trackers, reference tools for doctors and consumers, or means for mobile access to patient records, for instance. However, it should be noted that the FDA has yet to publish its final proposals in this area, despite the long lag since the publication of the earlier draft guidelines. Yee also mentions a bill put before Congress by Mike Honda, the Congressman who represents Silicon Valley. The Honda bill would create a new division within the FDA called the Office of Wireless Health. This is the kind of intervention that some in the industry do not like but Yee says the bill would also include support for entrepreneurs and investors in the form of loans and prizes that might be more to their taste.
I am tremendously excited by the potential synergies between digital health and medical product development; capturing this value, however, will require a sophisticated understanding -- not only of the technologies, but also of the specific...
It seems that the stars are aligned. These glimmers of facts, figures, innovation and needs are converging on the year 2013. And the result promises to be an inflection point for digital health. The curve of innovation will shift and place us all on a new course for managing disease and wellness.
The Touch Points of Change… #1. Explosive new technology Think about the smart phone and how far its come in just a few short years. Today, technology is the new intellectual playground that connects vision with application. The “computer” is yesterday’s news and now the advancement of innovation across a wide variety of areas (gaming, manufacturing, communications, etc.) is being applied to health with striking speed and expertise. And the players are both big, well-funded companies as well as smart, adroit and nimble start ups. #2. The pressing need to advance healthcare and the Affordable Care Act There’s almost no scientific, political or sociological discussion that doesn’t find its way to health and healthcare. The costs, access and resources are a key driver to seeking solutions to the health dilemma that exists right now and is projected to only get worse. Technology has always been part of the answer in other areas. Today, innovation and technology are poised to advance care in new directions that can drive new efficiencies and lead a course to self-care and wellness. #3. The caldron of connectivity Ideas are promiscuous. The profound interconnectedness of thinkers and ideas create a “neural-network” that powers our imaginations. And while exclusivity and the reality of business may obstruct this free-form engagement, the cross-pollination still flourishes. Unlike other social and technological movement of the past, our path and mechanism of innovation is driven by a new nature of collaboration, still driven by a competitive spark! Another important driver to the digital health revolution is the increasing level of patient / caregiver connectivity. The role of tele-medicine will foster new connections for care and become an essential proving ground for new “tricorder-type” technology that makes the interaction more clinically robust. #4. The power of cool Change is a funny thing. And for many people, that advancement of technology often diffuses slowly into a system. The advantage of the digital health movement is that carries “the stamp of cool” and takes clinical / social utility to a place beyond the practical–the emotional. It’s not about taking a pill, but living the life of innovation that is validated by science and medicine. #5. The empowerment of the “quantified self” in health Our lives are quantified in many ways. From banking to shopping habits, we exist as a complex set of numbers and actions. Ask American Express or Amazon. Their ability to quantify our lives provides a powerful engine of commerce and engagement. The same will come to be with our health and wellness. Today, tools to measure key clinical parameters (serum glucose, blood oxygen, etc.) will combine with mainstream devices used by joggers and athletes. The result will become “full circle” data that will proactively inform us of issues and concerns. It’s really nothing new at all. Think about your check engine light or tire pressure indicator in your car. Simple diagnostic tools that allow you to get ahead of an automotive problem. The same will apply to health as sensors and devices track, analyses and alert us to our own physiology. From tracking your body temperature to monitoring the effectiveness of an antibiotic to proactively tracking blood pressure, you will know more about yourself than ever before. And all this data and knowledge will become less of burden and more of reassurance that all systems are go! #6. Pharma’s search for new meaning Unless you’re swallowing a micro-camera that visualizes your colon, the notion of a traditional pill is changing. And the pharmaceutical industry knows it. The evolution of pharmaceutical science will move therapy to include preventative care, gene therapy and other innovations. The pill, as it conventionally exists today, will have a role, but innovation (and digital health) will make conventional therapies a bit harder to swallow. #7. Big Data and the electronic medical record New technology and the vast amounts of generated data come a rich source of information. Research protocols, family history, medical records and large-scale epidemiological studies are a significant aspect of digital health. These data may become the single biggest aspect of this new area. #8. Money One look at the market potential and another look at the multiple and varied companies entering this area and the conclusion is clear. Money is a key driver to innovation. The increasing role of venture capitol in digital health sends a clarion call of validation that this initiative is here to stay. There’s also a $10 million prize that’s attached to bring the digital health to life. The the Tricorder X Prize and $10 million prize also add to the rewards. #9. The voices of brilliance Science, medicine, genenomics, electronics, analytics, etc. The list of contributors to digital health is vast and smart as heck. And the very nature of the mixed and varied voices coming together will result in a “critical mass” of brilliance rarely seen in the conventional business model.
A heavy-hitting strategic deck from Rob Halkes (@rohal) containing a great deal of interest to anyone interested in the industry's evolving business model. Great work, Rob :)
Via Andrew Spong
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Maybe the gap between consumer packaged good marketers and pharma marketers is finally closing. According to a new Accenture Report ”the sales and marketing models of today need to be reshaped in order to be successful in today’s “new normal. Reducing costs, mastering multichannel marketing and improving digital effectiveness are the top strategic priorities for pharmaceutical sales and marketing executives.” Accenture says, There is a customer engagement revolution in motion in the Life Sciences industry as it faces life in the “new normal” after the peak of the patent cliff1. The industry is in an era where targeting specific populations and improving patient outcomes is critical for specialty products and where reaching more customers in rapidly developing markets is paramount for growth. This revolution is requiring companies to rethink how they can reach patients, payers, providers and governments in both mature and emerging markets—at speed, at the right price and with the right information for each target audience. This is a significant change from the “feet on the street,” single message selling model that worked well for blockbuster drugs in mature healthcare markets. And I think I finally found out why agency people are reporting that pharma is spending more in digital marketing. According to the report The use of third-party service providers is a relatively common practice in the industry that will continue to increase. ... The real challenge is can third parties really provide the best analytics and digital marketing strategy as someone who actually works within the brand team/company? It has been my experience that too many pharma companies treat third parties as vendors and don’t always share every bit of important information. Even more important outside agencies need to understand the dynamics, including the corporate politics, within the organization. Employees who don’t understand digital marketing and want to hold onto more “glamorous” channels like TV may fight the shift in dollars to analytics and digital marketing. Still this is great news for pharma which has a reputation of coming late to the party.
Via rob halkes
Given pending mobile medical apps guidance from the FDA, Rock Health has developed a guide for digital health entrepreneurs trying to navigate the FDA process. Defintely a usefull presentation.
Via Olivier Janin
This article is about the top global pharma company’s use of the social media channel Facebook.
An ePharma Summit panel of physicians takes the sheen off new marketing initiatives by telling pharmas they find them useless.
At first the stat looks impressive; pharma is among the leaders in percentage increases in digital spending but when you look at how much they are spending on interactive they are near the bottom o...
Home healthcare is the fastest growing sector in the health care industry, and it is estimated that it will increase significantly in the coming years.1 Advantages to homecare include improved quality of life for the patients, reduced costs due to reduced stays in hospital and increased medication compliance. Graeme Duncan is the Group Director of Strategy & Marketing at Healthcare at Home, a leading patient support organisation. They provide homecare and patient level distribution to almost 200,000 patients across Europe on a daily basis. He speaks with us on the benefits to patients of home healthcare and the benefits to the wider healthcare system. Interview summary
RA: In what disease areas can homecare be applied? GD: We currently operate across approximately 30 different disease areas, including Rheumatology, Gastroenterology, Oncology, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension, Multiple Sclerosis, ERT, Transplant and Nutrition. This is growing all the time, particularly with the emergence of more rare and orphan conditions. These often specialised areas lend themselves very well to using homecare. Ensuring patients are able to access treatment and are supported are key benefits of homecare services. Many pharmaceutical companies looking to launch new treatments for rare and orphan conditions realise that homecare can enable them to rapidly develop robust banks of information and data on the value of their offering as well as ease market access issues. RA: How can homecare services impact on the quality of life of Oncology patients, for example? GD: In one word – SIGNIFICANTLY! There is a lot of published evidence demonstrating that patients “prefer” such services compared with traditional hospital care. This is for a variety of reasons linked to convenience, avoiding travel and other costs, not being exposed to hospital infections and privacy benefits. However beyond patient preference there is evidence that shows patients experience less side effects and have improved quality of life as a result of homecare services. For example a study in 2009 published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed significant improvements in side effects in a cohort of homecare patients when compared with a cohort treated under normal hospital pathways.2 In addition, the homecare cohort had less unplanned admissions and inpatient days. Another example was published in the British Journal of Cancer in 2005 where a study looking at breast cancer patients on Zoledronic acid and homecare had significant QOL improvements...
The application of gamification for patient health may have implications in the future. However, how can this be applied and with what objectives?
If you’re like me, there’s nothing you hate more than having a great marketing idea get squashed by regulatory and never see the light of day for fear of running afoul of the FDA. I get why it happ...
A recap of the 6 innovative digital health products that dominated CES 2013 held in conjunction with the Digital Health Summit held in Las Vegas last week.
The last 12-months have seen the pharma industry become increasingly comfortable with social media, or at least the idea of using it.
Social media channels were often used to support off-line campaigns and, where three years ago the launch of a new Twitter account would have been big news, this year it was pretty much expected that companies should use social media.
Noteworthy uses of social media by pharma in 2012 included Roche’s sponsorship in March of the Diabetes Nest platform, a Twitter-based social network that curates, filters and presents relevant, real-time conversations to the diabetes online community.
In June, Pfizer went all-out with a major US social media campaign to kick-start a conversation about ageing. The company’s long-term Get Old initiative includes Facebook and Twitter presences, which run alongside a bespoke online community that will allow users to share and view stories, photos and videos about getting old, and even vote on how they feel about ageing.
Then in November, GlaxoSmithKline allowed its vice president of global brand communications , Kerry O’Callaghan, to use the corporate @GSKTwitter account and participate in a tweet chat about internal communications strategies for major events. (Naturally the focus was on GSK’s sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic games.)
Pinteresting?
The rise of online pin board Pinterest during 2012 presented, and still presents, pharma with a rare opportunity to engage with an emerging social media channel.
It may not have grabbed as much press attention as Twitter, but it is the first new social media channel to have threatened to really go mainstream in the last couple of years and, in January 2012, it became the fastest social media site to break the 10 million unique visitor mark.
The first big pharma company to join Pinterest was Bayer in April, when it began using it to share images and information about its activities in the US.
By September, the number of companies exploring Pinterest was gradually gaining momentum, as Boehringer Ingelheim, GE Healthcare boards, Menarini and Novo Nordisk all started pinning.
A return to blogging
Blogs were one of the first social networks that pharma companies used as external-facing communications tools, but their long-form, long-term nature has seen them overtaken by tools that are quicker and easier to use, such as Twitter.
Nevertheless, blogs have remained a constant presence on the pharma social media scene, and each year has generally seen one or two new additions to the ranks.
This year, however, it felt like blogging had a resurgence. The numbers remain fairly low, but companies launched a variety of specialised and general blogs over the last 12 months.
In October, AstraZeneca launched a science-focused blog called Lab Talk that it hopes will eventually grow into an online scientific forum. The new site aims to be a place that scientists from within AZ and the wider industry can discuss “cutting-edge science and innovation” and – perhaps somewhat hopefully - share their ideas and approaches.
But while AZ was building on the experience of setting up its corporate blog (AZ Health Connections, which launched in 2009), Sanofi took the opposite path in December, going from the specialised Discuss Diabetes blog it launched in 2011 to debut in December its new corporate Speaking of Sanofi blog.
There were further blogs launches throughout the year from Bayer, which assembled a team of UK patient contributors for its diabetes blog; Lilly, which launched in Canada the first of a series of local versions of its LillyPad corporate blog; Shire with its Your Partner In Epilepsy blog; and Boehringer Ingelheim, with its More Health corporate social responsibility blog.
From blogs to Twitter to Pinterest, when taken as a whole pharma’s initiatives in 2012 show an industry making ever-greater use of social media channels. But, the still fragmented nature of companies’ use of the technology suggests that while they might be comfortable with the idea of digital channels, in practice there’s still some way to go.
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