PHARMA NEWS, MULTICHANNEL & CROSSCHANNEL MAKETING

Welcome to the October 31, 2017, issue of Pharma Industry News Update (aka PinUp). 

Some experts are 'heartbroken' that the pharmaceutical industry has not done more in the digital health arena and they blame it on belief in "myths" about FDA regulations. Good luck busting those myths! Another myth is that education programs promulgating the old "just say no to drugs" campaign are going to help end the current opioid epidemic. The last myth that deserves mentioning is that the drug industry is not culpable.

**********ARTICLES***********
 * Five Regulatory Myths About FDA Regulation of Pharma in the Digital Health Arena
* Trump Has Not Grasped What’s Needed to Combat Opioid Crisis
* Dancing with Fentanyl: Insys Sales Reps Caught Rapping to Boost Sales

Access this issue here.

About Pharma Industry News Update

The Pharma Industry News Update (aka PinUp) is published every Tuesday and Friday as part of the Pharma Marketing News subscription service. It features curated pharma industry news and views of topical interest from a variety of sources. If you'd like to receive this newsletter, subscribe here.

About the Author

John (PharmaGuy) Mack is a constructive critic of the pharmaceutical industry. You can follow him on Twitter as @pharmaguy

Welcome to the June 6, 2017, edition of Pharma Industry News Update (aka PinUp). View the Web version of this issue here: http://bit.ly/PINUP060617

Digital and social media tools can have a positive and negative impact on pharma. The tools can be used to increase sales but they can also be turned against pharma via snarky, unflattering memes. And, don't forget, everything you say can be used against you!

Articles in this issue:

• Digital Opinion Influencers/Leaders
• PharmaGuy's Favorite Memes
• Mylan Untroubled by Protests

About Pharma Industry News Update

The Pharma Industry News Update (aka PinUp) is published every Tuesday and Friday as part of the Pharma Marketing News subscription service. It features curated pharma industry news and views of topical interest from a variety of sources. If you'd like to receive this newsletter, subscribe here.

DRG Digital - Manhattan Research's Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2017 study asked 2,784 U.S. physicians across 25+ specialties about their use of emerging technology, how they find information and make decisions, and what they want from pharma companies. The aim of the study is to help marketers refocus their digital efforts on what works and plan more effective multichannel campaigns.

Lead analyst Kelly Pinola comments,  "Pharma needs to dial down the promotional messaging and lead with valuable educational resources in order to regain physician trust. The good news for pharmas is that there’s an opportunity here for them to differentiate themselves as truly user-centered organizations, since this is a problem we’re seeing across the industry.”

Three key findings for marketers are highlighted in the infographic.

Most executives agree that a digital transformation is necessary to remain competitive, keep pace with disruptive technologies and evolve with shifting consumer expectations. Still, many are unsure of how to start the process, or even what it entails.

eMarketer defines digital transformation as the process by which business leaders harness the capabilities and advances of emerging technologies to digitally reinvent their company’s operations, products, marketing, culture and goals for future growth.

Primary Way in Which Their Company Defines Digital According to Business and IT Executives Worldwide, Nov 2016 (% of respondents)

Technology is the means to transformation, not an end in itself. Instead the focus should be on setting a clear goal for the future, then setting a strategy based on that vision.

According to eMarketer’s latest report, “Digital Transformation 2017: Disrupting ‘Business as Usual,’” most executives believe that digital transformation is necessary, although it is not always obvious what digital transformation is—or how to approach it.

In fact, many executives can’t even agree on their company’s definition of digital. “If you put 20 [executives] in a room and ask them to define ‘digital,’ you are guaranteed to get 20 different answers,” said Anand Eswaran, corporate vice president of Microsoft Services and Microsoft Digital.

29% of respondents said digital is synonymous with the work of IT, 14% believe digital is about customer-facing technology activities and another 14% said digital refers to all investments the company makes to integrate technology across the business. The only thing clear from this survey is that there is no consensus.

Further Reading:

• “McKinsey Looks at Four Keys to Successful Digital Transformation in #Pharma”; http://sco.lt/7X5AK9

DRG Digital - Manhattan Research's Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2017 study asked 2,784 U.S. physicians across 25+ specialties about their use of emerging technology, how they find information and make decisions, and what they want from pharma companies. The aim of the study is to help marketers refocus their digital efforts on what works and plan more effective multichannel campaigns.

Lead analyst Kelly Pinola comments,  "Pharma needs to dial down the promotional messaging and lead with valuable educational resources in order to regain physician trust. The good news for pharmas is that there’s an opportunity here for them to differentiate themselves as truly user-centered organizations, since this is a problem we’re seeing across the industry.”

Three key findings for marketers are highlighted in the infographic.

According to Fard Johnmar, founder and president of Enspektos, pharmaceutical executives are flooded with digital health opportunities and executives and leaders at these firms are having trouble triaging these innovations to determine which ones will meet key organizational, business and health goals.

Nevertheless, many drug and device companies are establishing internal innovation groups that are responsible for locating, developing and supporting the integration of digital health technologies into their operations. These companies are form an exclusive "Pharma Digital Health Accelerator Club."

This article features several examples of what the pharmaceutical industry is doing to implement disruptive digital innovations that help them manage clinical trials, improve their products, and support healthcare professionals and patients.

Contents (partial list):

• Opportunities & Obstacles for Pharma's Use of IoT
• Novo Nordisk Develops Remote Digital Glucose Monitoring Tools
• Top Pharma Companies Establish HCP Technology Standards
• Apple Tightens Health App Rules
• JNJ Innovation Aim: Develop Breakthrough Medical Devices
• Takeda Awards $35K to Digital Startup App for Depression
• JNJ Expands Membership in Digital Innovation Club
• Takeda Joins Pharma Digital Innovation Club
• Important Digital Health Incubators in Europe
• GSK & MIT Test Flumoji - An App That May Provide RWE
• Pfizer Shuns "Next Shiny Thing" When Developing mHealth Apps
• The Potential of Apple's ResearchKit in Clinical Trials
• Google & GSK Team Up to Launch "Bioelectronics Medicine"

Download the PDF here.

Celgene and IBM are teaming up on a new patient safety monitoring platform to improve pharmacovigilance methods throughout the drug development process.

The platform, dubbed IBM Watson for Patient Safety, will combine Watson’s cognitive computing chops with Celgene’s extensive experience in drug safety and risk management. It will be an outcome- and evidence-based drug safety decision support system for life sciences companies, the duo said in a statement.

It will run on the Watson Health Cloud. The highly automated, modular, end-to-end drug safety platform will allow for the rapid collection, collation and automated analysis of vast amounts of data from a variety of sources, the companies said in a statement. It will help biopharmaceutical companies better manage and interpret large volumes of data relating to potential side effects associated with drug products, they said.

“For a long time, very big decisions around the use and disposition of drugs have been taken based on small datasets,” said John Freeman, corporate vice president of global drug safety and risk management at Celgene. “This is an opportunity to not only streamline the way that information is handled within pharma companies and regulators, but also to enable much greater clarity of insight born of an ability to access large datasets.”

IBM Watson for Patient Safety will use cognitive computing to understand structured and unstructured language and therefore use a lot of different sources to help in making decisions, said Lauren O’Donnell, vice president of life sciences at IBM Watson Health. These include anonymized electronic medical records and medical claims databases. In addition to analyzing and identifying trends in large datasets, IBM Watson also learns. And the case numbers are only continuing to grow: Between 2008 and 2011 alone, there was a 90% increase in serious adverse events recorded, she said.

While the obvious applications are for decision-making in the early stages of drug development, leading to greater efficiencies while developing products, there are also advantages post-commercialization, Freeman said. The platform can help patients who are at greater risk of side effects manage their condition better and reduce the likelihood of those side effects.

“Celgene established one of the first risk management systems and its commitment to pharmacovigilance continues with this partnership,” O’Donnell said in the statement. “Together we look forward to creating a cognitive solution that can be applied across the industry to help benefit patients everywhere.”

It is a fact that healthcare is unsustainable. American health spending will reach nearly $5 trillion, or 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2021. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there is a worldwide shortage of around 4.3 million physicians, nurses, and allied health workers. So how could we change it?

The most likely solution is technology. The introduction of artificial intelligence, robotics, social media, various sensors and wearables in medicine could save millions of lives and reduce costs at the same time. There is one question, however, which needs to be answered. Who can and should provide these new technologies for the advancement of humanity?

So, where are pharmaceutical and medical companies in this story? Shouldn’t they ensure the smooth advancement towards the paradigm-shift from offline to digital healthcare?

Well, the question is a little bit more complex. Pharmaceutical companies have decades-long experience in healthcare but most of them are still struggling with adopting new technologies. This is just not their strongest arm. Some new medical companies are good at adopting technology, but have no experience in introducing breakthrough changes into healthcare. As most of the changes healthcare faces in the coming years are centered on digital solutions, technology companies have a competitive advantage.

Based on this logic, the inevitable response would be that technological companies could provide the innovative ideas and solutions which are necessary in order to change healthcare and lead it into the 21st or 22nd century.

But the picture is not all rosy.

New communications technology has the potential to both disrupt and enhance the pharmaceutical industry, but research shows that pharma often needs to up its game when it comes to the adoption of new technologies.

Mobile devices have transformed how we access and consume content, and are poised to make similarly huge changes to the way consider our health (read “The mHealth App Market is at the Saturation Point”; http://sco.lt/5thWGv). mHealth revenue is projected to reach 26 billion by 2017, and the number of health apps has doubled in just the past two years. Social is also likely to have a major impact in the way that pharma communicates in the coming years. 52% of physician’s surveyed by Deloitte in this research expressed interest in communicating with pharma companies via social media.

However, pharma currently lags behind other verticals for using social media. Pharma spending on digital advertising is far below that of other industries, and it still conducts most of it’s communications with physicians via traditional channels. There is big potential for new communications technology to make the pharmaceutical industry more efficient and more engaged with it’s customers. This infographic from Deloitte shows the potential for new digital technology to allow pharma to market itself more effectively.

Welcome to the May 4, 2016, edition of Pharma Industry News Update (aka PinUp). PinUp is published every Tuesday as part of your Pharma Marketing News subscription service. It features curated pharma industry news and views of topical interest from a variety of sources.

Inside this issue:

FDA Warns About New Abilify Impulse-control Problems - e.g., Binge Eating & Sex

FDA is warning that compulsive or uncontrollable urges to gamble, binge eat, shop, and have sex have been reported with the use of the antipsychotic drug aripiprazole (Abilify, Abilify Maintena, Aristada, and generics).

The Essure Backlash: Women Feel Betrayed by FDA

Women across America are furious with the FDA [and Bayer], and nowhere is this sentiment louder than on Twitter, where patients are posting daily about the devastating effects on their lives of a permanent, non-hormonal contraceptive called Essure.

Did Pharma Spend $3 Billion on Internet Advertising in 2015?

Digital ad spending last year was just shy of $60 billion, with pharma accounting for about $3 billion of that, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual ad revenue report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Without looking at the devil in the details, you might be impressed by that number. But the devil in the details puts the kibosh on that conclusion.

Answers to Diabetes Questions: Dr. Google vs. Online Patients

Objective: The objective of this research was to investigate the strengths and challenges of various types of health information available online and to suggest what information sources best fit various question types.

More #Pharma Companies Have Periscope Accounts, But How Many Have Used It?

Mark Senak (EyeonFDA blog) examined the top 25 companies by sales and found that 10 of them (40%) had developed a Periscope handle. Now instead of just doing a check, I have included them in the data base I started that tracks what pharma is doing in social media across several platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and now Periscope. Here is what he found about pharma and Periscope use after going back to the top 25 companies.

As patients continue to grow more comfortable in a digital world and more savvy about their health care options, pharmaceutical manufacturers are changing their sales models, according to a recent study.

Best Practices, LLC, surveyed 39 digital marketers at 30 large and small pharmaceutical companies to examine the most effective marketing strategies, identify innovative approaches and look for trends. “Key Trends & Innovative Activities in Biopharma Digital Marketing” included use of mobile and social media, wearable devices, electronic records and digital customer service models. 

“Pharmaceutical companies have to meet the growing number of educated patients who are out in the digital world,” said Cameron Tew, who heads research services and business operations for Best Practices, a North Carolina-based research firm. “What we’re seeing is the business model has changed quite a bit. They’re not sending in a single sales rep with that one product. Now, it’s a much broader group of people who are working at the provider level or educator level and talking more about the science of their products.”

The survey included 13 companies with 2014 revenue of more than $10 billion, such as AstraZeneca, Merck and Novartis. The balance of the companies surveyed had less than $10 million in revenue for 2014, including Biogen, Abbott and Baxter.

The study showed that the top three marketing channels for healthcare providers are e-marketing, e-presentations and point-of-care apps that allow health care providers to use mobile devices to check medical history or develop treatment plans based on patient needs.

Global pharma company Takeda is another example of a leading company that is pursuing new applications of digital technology to develop solutions to the challenges facing healthcare, both here in Japan and around the world.
 
Takeda and its “Start-Up Incubator”
With more than 30,000 employees, a presence in 70 countries and products across a wide range of therapeutic areas, Takeda is constantly looking for new ways to bring new value to patients as part of its patient-centric culture. One of these ways is its approach to digital strategy and technology.
 
Takeda has embedded digital strategy into its DNA with a model it calls the "Takeda Digital Accelerator”," designed to provide investment to new ideas that apply key customer digital trends to the healthcare space, with the goal of generating patient-centric innovations that can drive stronger outcomes. Its foundation is in digital experimentation, where new ways of thinking and working are discovered by testing and learning.
 
First, Takeda assembles the teams and resources needed for this experimentation to take place. Then, different teams work on small, local challenges, which they test using specific hypothesis. These findings are then incubated and shared acros the Takeda community, where other teams can leverage them.
 
Another way this Digital Accelerator model works is through the global ecosystem of external partners Takeda has built over the years. These partners are also helpe make recommendations and solutions to healthcare challenges, and the findings are incubated, tested and shared across the larger network.
 
This kind of forward thinking helps Takeda identify, explore and experiment with new ways of digitizing the healthcare experience in ways that ultimately benefit patients.

La semaine dernière, nous avons encore eu droit à une belle démonstration de violence des chauffeurs de taxi. Une action très spectaculaire, mais bien dérisoire, car s’ils peuvent éventuellement faire pression sur le gouvernement pour... Lire la suite

Technology transforms health care. Digital solutions are the future of medical landscapes. The pharmaceutical industry keeps pace with innovation and technology.