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A chart depicting decision-making factors can be found in the article itself by clicking on the title link above.
A great post from Mat Philips (@neovoca) detailing how to get started in social listening, and his favourite 15 pharma-related hashtags: 1. #Pharma General, worldwide industry. Often news on companies, academic studies, drug releases, corporate communications and regulatory articles 2. #DigitalHealth Covers innovative spectrum of technologies that achieve specific health outcomes, articles include medical devices, sensors & health data 3. #mHealth ‘Mobile health’, the practice of medicine and health initiatives supported by mobile devices inc. smartphones, tablets & computers 4. #PatientEngagement Patients invested in their own care. The valuable relationship patients have with health stakeholders, most commonly healthcare providers 5. #hcsm ‘Healthcare social media’ throughout the world, interactions that create & share valuable medical information that support patient care 6. #hcsmeu ‘Healthcare social media Europe’, the same as #hcsm but focused within Europe, this often reflected in the difference in regulation 7. #hcmktg ‘Healthcare marketing’, best practice including digital, multichannel and email marketing as well as ethical and regulatory considerations 8. #HIT/HealthIT *these are closely linked but separate hashtags ‘Healthcare information technology’, provides umbrella coverage of management of health information across computer systems 9. #HealthApps ‘Health applications’, computer software that performs a useful task relative to healthcare. Usually regarding smartphones & tablets 10. #ePatient ‘Electronic/internet patient’, health consumers who utilise the internet and electronic communication tools to gather medical information 11. #EHR/EMR* *these are closely linked but separate hashtags ‘Electronic health/medical records’, systematic collection, storage and utilisation of electronic health/medical data 12. #QuantifiedSelf Data acquisition of an individual’s daily life input, often covers individual’s health data via wearable technology 13. #BigData Large & complex data sets from which trends and meaningful insights can be found. Covering capture, storage, visualisation and analytics 14. #Gamification The integration of game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage user, solve problems and derive specific outputs 15. #MedEd Comprehensive coverage of medical education including curriculum content, engagement, delivery and healthcare professional bodies
Having to endure an encounter with another dreary batch of lifeless communications about ‘multi-channel marketing’, ‘patient strategies’, and ‘market access’ isn’t the way that anyone working in the pharmaceutical industry should have to begin their day. Nevertheless, it is precisely what is waiting in the in box of hundreds of thousands of professionals this morning. Why? Because this is the way pharma talks about itself, and allows itself to be spoken about by those who provide services to it.
The U.K.'s struggling AstraZeneca ($AZN) is not only looking to media that is social to develop some kind of relationship with patients; it has gone local as well. The company provided some resources as well as expertise for the My Medication Passport tracker, which was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) for use across the National Health System (NHS) in the U.K., according to PMLive. The tool can be used as an Android or iPhone app and also comes in a paper booklet for those who prefer the traditional form of documentation. It allows patients or their caregivers to track some of the usual kinds of health data, like which drugs are to be taken in what doses and when. It also includes information on sensitivities, allergies and vaccinations, as well as some hospitals and other information. It was provided to more than 5,000 patients across Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust as it was being developed and is now being distributed more widely in the country, PMLive reported.
In July of 2012, National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) convened a meeting of the Consumer Consortium on eHealth. The Consortium was created in early 2011 and has since developed into a diverse group of over 300 individuals and organizations, united in the common goal to use health IT to engage patients in their care. During the 2012 Consumer Engagement Summit, it became clear that something had changed in the way people were talking about patient engagement. In 2011, there had been a persistent question: “Why patient engagement?” By this past summer, the questions were: “How do we do it?” and “Where do we start?” It was with that zeal and enthusiasm that NeHC, led by Board member and Senior Vice President for Policy at Healthwise Leslie Kelly Hall, embarked on an effort to help organizations identify that starting point and give them a finish line to strive toward. This year NeHC, with the participation and contribution of over 150 collaborators, pointed out the path to the finish line with the Patient Engagement Framework. The Framework provides a guide for healthcare organizations to think about patient engagement using eHealth tools and resources. It encompasses five phases of development to strengthen organizations’ patient engagement strategies: Inform Me, Engage Me, Empower Me, Partner With Me, and Support My e-Community. The characteristics of some of these phases include information and way finding, e-tools, patient-specific education, and the build-up to patient access to records, patient generated data, interoperable records, collaborative care, and community support.
Some of the world's richest internet entrepreneurs, including Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, have awarded 11 disease researchers $3m (£1.9m) each. Nine of the recipients of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences are based at US institutions. The other two are from the Netherlands and Japan. Many of the winners work on cell genetics and how it relates to disease. One of the sponsors, genetics company founder 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, said the winners should be household names. In addition to Mr Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan and Ms Wojcicki, the prize is sponsored Ms Wojcicki's husband Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, and Yuri Milner, a Russian entrepreneur. Mr Milner, along with the new foundation's chair, Arthur Levinson, a former chief executive at a biotech company and current chairman of Apple, chose the prize winners. Cornelia Bargmann, a winner from Rockefeller University, told the website Fast Company that she initially thought it was a practical joke or an internet scam. "The scale of this is so outsized I think it will have a huge impact on the life sciences," Ms Bargmann said. From 2014 on, the foundation will award $3m to five scientists each year. There is no age restriction on the prize and past winners can win again. The 2013 winners are: Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University, for the genetics of neural circuits and behaviourDavid Botstein of Princeton University, for the mapping of inherited disease in humansLewis Cantley of Weill Cornell Medical College, for the discovery of an enzyme and its role in cancer metabolismHans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands, for describing how problems in signalling molecules can cause cancerNapoleone Ferrara of the University of California, San Diego, for discoveries on tumour growth that have led to therapies for some kinds of cancer and eye diseaseTitia de Lange of Rockefeller University, for research on telomeres, the protective tips on the ends of chromosomes, and how they relate to cancerEric Lander of the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for the discovery of ways to identify human disease genesCharles Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, for targeted therapy for cancer genesBert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University, for research on genes that suppress tumoursRobert Weinberg of MIT, who discovered the first human gene that when mutated causes cancerShinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, for work on developing artificially derived stem cells
Keas, a startup which gamefies employee wellness and compliance, today announced the launch of a new platform that adds more social elements to the service, can be accessed on iOS, and opens up Keas to third party web developers. Keas also announced a new CEO: Josh Stevens, an alum of AOL and, most recently, YouSendIt. The company has also opened its platform to allow outside developers build on top of it. It’s unclear just how open the platform will be for third parties to really get creative with the data because the company is mum for now, though it says it has some partner announcements to make. Keas said it would be working with quantified self device makers, publishers, and wellness app makers. Stevens said the service could work with those QS devices – he didn’t name names, but the Nike FuelBand and FitBit fall in the category. He also said the platform would integrate with fitness centers and cafeterias, so when an employee makes a healthy food choice, for example, he can automatically earn points.
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.
David Shaywitz writes: As pharma companies confront the digital health wave and contemplate their digital health strategy, I see four high-level options: 1. Opportunistic adjacency: Leverage healthcare knowledge and regulatory expertise to develop technology in a related but distinct area, ultimately anticipating it evolves into a discrete business unit, analogous to animal health (e.g. Lilly’s Elanco), generics (Novartis subsidiary Sandoz), nutrition, and consumer health. 2. Follow with interest: Determine that digital health, while promising, is still in its earliest days. Just as some pharmas may be relieved they resisted investing in the first round of stem cell technologies, for instance, they might be similarly inclined to adopt a watchful waiting posture, and give the field some time to settle out. Functional areas could utilize specific digital health solutions when they evolve to the point they are available from vendors, similar to the way other solutions are utilized by the industry. 3. Elevate: Set up a dedicated “digital health” division envisioned not as a standalone business unit, but tightly integrated and explicitly intended to support the main pharma business, similar to the way many companies have dedicated “biomarker” divisions, for example. This group could be responsible for monitoring external developments and internalizing and operationalizing the most promising technologies. 4. Planned obsolescence: My personal choice, this approach would set up a dedicated “digital health” group, as in 3, but with the stated mission of catalyzing technology adoption, and with the explicit expectation that it would wind down within a set time (say five years). If successful, awareness of the relevant digital health opportunities and expertise in their appropriate utilization would by that point be located in the individual functional areas.
Mobile and digital health’s potential to help bring about healthy behavior changes has led a number of companies to target the problem with new connected devices, applications, and services. Some of these have claimed to be highly effective: MediSafe recently stated that their app raised users’ adherence rate to 81 percent over the course of its first eight weeks that it was made available, and Vitality GlowCaps once reported pushing adherence rates to as high as 98 percent, both well above the World Health Organization average of 50 percent. NEHI has stated that digital health offerings similar to these have considerably improved adherence, but the market penetration for these tools is still low. The challenge for these companies is not just to develop an effective product, but also to figure out who will pay for it. That means addressing the sticky question of whose problem med adherence really is. Patients don’t take their medication for a number of reasons. Forgetfulness is one, particularly in chronic disease patients who have a large regimen of pills to keep track of and in elderly patients who may have poor memories or become confused easily. But other patients don’t take their meds for psychological reasons: some patients “feel fine” and skip a drug, some are concerned about real side effects. Some, according to NEHI Senior Health Policy Associate Nick McNeill, are concerned about imagined side effects. Finally, many patients stop taking medications because they simply can’t afford the co-pay. This, of course, is not a complete list but it does include some of the more commonly referenced reasons. Digital health could play a role in resolving some of them.
Sven Awege (@svennieco) writes: Over the last few years I’ve worked in and with Pharma marketers from the digital side, trying to preach and teach the virtues of digital channels. It has been a thankless task, with bucket loads of blood, sweat, and tears of frustration. I have used a number of different techniques, from talking about the revolution in big forums to small softly, softly “express yourself” type workshops (no, there were no incense sticks smoking away in the background to the sound of trickling water). Once the adrenalin rush dies down after each event I try to analyze what impact this may have had. To be fair, some glacially slow progress has been made as the median knowledge of the industry inches forward, but it has not been the tidal wave that some had predicted, or hoped for. Should we be surprised?
Probably not.
Looking back to my earlier days as an eBusiness evangelist in the late 90′s, where a solid part of our strategic recommendations included “give your employees access to email”, we spent many a night conjuring projections with terms such as “dis-intermediation” and the likes floating about on post-its.
I recently took a fresh look at some of those crazy visionary presentations that we churned out, and guess what… many of them were right (Warren Buffet logic), but nearly all the timelines were wrong.
So what went wrong then, and is the same thing happening now?
Last year was a banner year for digital health, and in 2013, it can only get better as the trends in healthcare are increasingly digital-based. In 2012, tech companies poured $1.4 billion into digital health companies, a 45 percent increase from 2011, according to a recent year-end report from healthcare technology accelerator Rock Health. Fifty-six percent more deals occurred in 2012 for digital health than in 2011. Rock Health's report indicates that compared to the declining investment in traditional healthcare, software and digital health funding is on its way up. Another impressive number is 134, the number of digital health companies that each raised $2 million in 2012. Personal health tools and tracking, health consumer engagement, EMR/EHR and hospital administration all are moving toward digital, comprising one-third of all digital deals made in 2012. Overall, 179 organizations invested in digital health companies, with most only engaging in a single deal. Eight investors, however--including Qualcomm Ventures, Aberdare Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund--invested in three or more digital health companies.
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Regina Holliday (@ReginaHolliday) writes: Most patients in the social media space were just regular people who began to speak out. In many cases they did that out of pain. Just as cattle’s brand is seared upon his flesh, the patient’s brand is seared upon their soul. The patient may brand themselves with their formal name:Regina Holliday, a modification of said name: e-PatientDave, a created name: Afternoon Napperor the name of the organization they have created: Colontown. They complete this painful process to spread their message be it focused on patient data access, patient empowerment or disease specific research and funding. So the primary brand in such discussions is the brand of self and those in marketing are interested in tagging along for the ride[...] We like to thank folks personally for the good work they have done. When we work on campaigns in Social Media we expect the support to be like a friendship: it goes both ways.
Whenever you publish or discover and share any pharma-produced medical educational material, add the #PHOAMed hashtag to your post.
In order to merit being #PHOAMed, the material should be: non-promotional — i.e. unbranded, though the company’s logo is obviously fine. In fact, it is essential for verification purposesaccessible — i.e. not behind a data-scrape
This year IBM dedicated its Five in Five series (an annual list of five technologies that are likely to advance dramatically) solely to sensors. Digital sensors of the touch, sight,hearing, taste and smell kind along with their potential are all profiled by IBM Sensor technology is going through a renaissance as companies develop smart and innovative new ways to track data using them. Sensor innovation is in-part driving the Digital Health Revolution as digital health companies find ingenius ways to integrate them in to apps, devices and other peripherals. The smartphone will play an increasing important role in all of this as they go from having six built-in sensors currently to having sixteen in the next five years. If these predictions are correct then the next five years will be half-a-decade of sensor proliferation meaning the Digital Health Ecosystem will grow exponentially. In the meantime though there are already a plethora of digital health sensors in use or in the pipeline that are helping people improve and, in some instances, save lives.
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding has agreed to expand access to its clinical trial data as the pharmaceutical industry faces calls for greater transparency on scientific data. The company's move follows a decision this month by British rival GlaxoSmithKline to publish detailed clinical study reports as well as the results of all drug trials. Roche has also come under pressure from critics, including non-profit organization The Cochrane Collaboration, to hand over data on its blockbuster flu drug Tamiflu amid claims from researchers that there is little evidence it works. The drugmaker said on Tuesday that it would work with an independent body to evaluate and approve requests to access anonymized patient data and would support the release of full clinical study reports(CSR) via regulatory authorities. "We understand and support calls for our industry to be more transparent about clinical trial data with the aim of meeting the best interests of patients and medicine," Daniel O'Day, head of Roche's pharmaceuticals unit, said.
Millions of words have been written over recent years across media channels about the relative performance of pharmaceutical companies in social environments. This site has contributed a few thousand of its own, it should probably be noted at the outset. No aspect of the management of the portfolio of presences of companies has been deemed to be too small to analyse in detail. Repeatedly. As the novelty wore off, we have for the most part managed to emerge collectively from the pleasure palace of social with our sanity intact, our humanity undiminished, and our sights firmly set on using social technologies to do things differently. Somewhere along the way, a pharma social hegemony appears to have been established...
Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company has stunned the medical world by announcing it would back a campaign to publish all clinical trial results to preserve the safety of medicines. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced the move eight months after it was hit with a record $3bn (£1.9bn) fine in the US last July, in part for withholding safety data about its best selling diabetes drug, Avandia. In all, 26 drug companies – including eight of the 10 biggest global players – have racked up fines of more than $11bn (£7bn) in the last three years after having been found to have acted dishonestly. The results of clinical trials, most of which are funded by the drug industry, are frequently withheld when they deliver disappointing results. This distorts the evidence base and raises doubts about the safety of medicines that are available on the market. GSK said in a statement it would sign up to the alltrials.net campaign which is seeking the registration of all clinical trials, the reporting of all summary results and for full Clinical Study Results – the detailed findings – to be made public. Campaign organisers who include Ben Goldacre, best-selling author of Bad Pharma, Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal and Sir Iain Chalmers, co-founder of the Cochrane Library, said it was a “cartwheel moment.” Dr Goldacre said he had met Andrew Whitty, chief executive of GSK, last week. “It was clear they have spent a lot of time thinking about these issues. While I will always wait for proof of the pudding I do not believe this is mere lip service,” Dr Goldacre said. “There is no serious defence for withholding information about clinical trials from doctors and patients. It is simply unethical and it harms patients.” Observers said GSK had occupied the moral high ground by its move and rival firms would likely follow suit. The alltrials.net campaign has grown rapidly since publication of Bad Pharma four months ago, winning the backing of the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Commons Science and Technology Committee has announced an inquiry into missing trials.
If I toss a coin, but hide the result every time it comes up tails, it looks as if I always throw heads.
Recorded live in front of an audience of 70 medical communications and pharmaceutical professionals in Oxford by the @Digitally_Sick team of Faisal Ahmed (@sickonthenet), Alex Butler (@Alex__Butler) and Andrew Spong (@andrewspong) at the kind invitation of Peter Llewellyn (@NetworkPharma)
Via Alex Butler
Three recent IBM patents that will inform future health: 1. System and method for providing answers to questions does exactly what it sounds like. Much like you can now ask Siri on your iPhone about the weather, IBM has developed a semantic system for understanding questions asked by a person and then providing an answer in context. But IBM's system aims to be much more flexible than Siri, generating “candidate answers” that are the most likely responses even as the question is being asked, then delivering the answer that best fits the inquiry. It's how IBM's Watson creamed Ken Jennings on Jeopardy! U.S. Patent #8,275,803 filed September 25, 2012. 2. Electronic learning synapse with spike-timing dependent plasticity using unipolar memory-switching elements is an effort to mimic the human brain with a computer. More specifically, it's a system for microchips to emulate your brain's synapses. It's part of the research that's come out of IBM's SyNAPSE project that is working to reproduce the architecture of the brain, which is backed by Pentagon funding to the tune of $21 million in its current phase. U.S. Patent #8,250,010 filed Aug. 21, 2012. 3. Thin substrate fabrication using stress-induced substrate spalling is a low-cost semiconductors material to allow for thin and flexible products. Sure that could mean biomedical or wearable technology applications, but it could also mean some sort of electricity-carrying android skin. Not only will this manufacturing method be capable of making a solar-powered cell, it will do it cheaply. U.S. Patent #8,247,261 filed August 21, 2012.
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