Buzz e-sante

On a recent trip to the US, I couldn’t help notice the huge difference in the way American pharmaceutical brands are promoted compared to here in the UK. Vast sums are lavished on TV advertising prompting the good citizens of the US to ‘ask your doctor today’ about heartburn, insomnia, thin blood and, of course, erectile dysfunction. As if the scare-mongering messages aimed at men and women at a certain life stage weren’t enough, over two thirds of the ads were given over to the terrifying small print. ‘Side effects include…’ (deep breath).

My immediate response – ‘why?’ Surely there is a better, more cost effective, way to promote your brand given the changing dynamics of healthcare marketing? The rise of the empowered patient, access to information online, the decline of blockbuster drugs and the emergence of specialist treatments all fly in the face of mass-market ‘one-to-many’ TV advertising. Enter digital marketing, stage left.

On closer inspection, though, change is indeed afoot. US healthcare companies are spending far less on TV advertising compared to five years ago and are instead putting investment behind new digital solutions and a more targeted approach. TV spend dropped 10% in 2012 whilst pharma's overall direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising dropped by 11.5% to just $3.47 billion.

To understand the recent fall, we need to look back at the market context around the time TV advertising of prescribed drugs was first allowed in the US. A series of huge blockbuster drugs hit the market and pharma cos went to great expense to leverage their patent protection. It was Rufen, manufactured by Boots, to first get plugged on US television in 1983.

Worried about consumer safety and a legal backlash, the FDA introduced strict rules in 1985 requiring the ads to include significant risk information about the prescription drug in question. Hence the rise of the tediously long informercial, still present on US TV today. And pages of small print in press ads. But even this didn’t put the big drug companies off.

Now, the landscape has changed, meaning the limitless budgets of yesteryear (over $5 billion in 2006) don’t offer the same virtually guaranteed returns. Generics have eroded the market share of the big licensed brands and, more significantly, “citizen scientists” seek endorsement from their own social communities, rather than take the TV ads at their word, and look for genuine data-based persuasion from the drug companies and their doctors.

Hence the huge opportunity for digital in pharma. Today’s patient goes online first, to the surgery second. Brands should therefore concentrate on educating consumers, not just HCPs, with broader condition-based information that presents options and helps patients make the right choice.

Brands using digital to help, not sell to, consumers will reap the rewards as they will be seen to empower end-users. Hence the emergence of sophisticated apps, online health portals, and other digital innovations that slowly but surely are transforming healthcare, including the prescription and monitoring of medications.

Pharma companies are even further behind the curve when it comes to social media. A host of forces are at play here. Regulation cannot keep up with the technology, brands are terrified of leaving themselves open to litigious patients but, most fundamentally, the ‘always on’ 24 /7 nature of the medium jars with the painfully slow internal approval processes of most pharma companies. Imagine if every tweet you put out needed ten people to approve it? The moment would pass. It’s also telling that the MHRA, the body that regulates the advertising of medicines in the UK, has no reference at all to social media in its Blue Book guide.

But pharma will catch up. It has to. We are seeing more clients embrace digital – new websites, the trialling of e-commerce, the creation of patient communities and even baby steps into social media. Ultimately, consumers hold the cards so it’s up to the pharma companies to respond.

La montre iWatch aurait vu son équipe de développement doubler ces derniers mois mais elle ne devrait pas disposer de fonctions nécessitant un encadrement par la Food and Drug Administration.

L’oreillette Bluetooth développée par la startup Vigo permet de lutter contre la somnolence au quotidien en agissant avant même que son utilisateur s’aperçoive qu’il est fatigué, et préviendrait ainsi de nombreux accidents de la route.

If knowledge is power, then content (in proper context) is king. Why am I online blogging, pushing content through my website and even interacting on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and many other sites?  Because my patients are there. Increasingly, they are utilizing the Internet to self-diagnose; to look for “second opinions” from peers and friends; to research a physician, recommended treatment, or hospital; or to find the latest information on their disease.

Studies suggests that patients forget more than 50 percent of what they are told in the doctor’s office. Add to that misremembering or misinterpretation, and the information holes grow even larger. What happens to the holes when these individuals get home? Research shows that consumers trust the recommendations of peers or friends far above those of any advertisement. And where are people interacting with those friends? Where are they searching? In many instances, online. They are sharing useful information, and this includes health concerns, treatment protocols, and medications. When patients feel they can’t turn to their doctor for answers, pulling information from the Internet is an easy, efficient, and logical choice.

Medicine and healthcare are undergoing massive changes; more and more regulations and obligations eat into physicians’ clinic time. Reimbursements have dropped, and as a result many doctors have felt they needed to increase their appointment load and decrease the time they spend on each. For patients, that translates to less time with their physician, less learning, more questions, more doubt, and sadly, more fear. Their antidote is Google.

The root word for doctor is “docere,” or “to teach,” and our patients are making decisions based on what they read online. We as physicians have a moral obligation to be sure that the information they are receiving is accurate. If we do not have the time to teach our patients while they are in the clinic, we need to be present where they are to address their residual questions, hesitancy, and fears (often due to lack of knowledge), and also to aid them through their medical decision-making process. In short, we need to be active in producing or curating online medical content to aid our patients. 

Doctors often believe that they need to spend hours upon hours coming up with content; they believe there is too much risk involved in “tweeting” or putting a post on Facebook. Yet most studies show that physician content and social media interactions are perfectly appropriate. You know the rules – follow them. You do not need to be an active writer; you already answer the same questions day in and day out. Why not just sit and dictate the answer to those questions and post them online? Don’t want to hire a professional? Don’t. Tumblr, Posterous, and other such sites make it simple to set up a site for content in minutes. Still don’t want to create content? Fine – then share links to accurate, actionable, and useful information on Twitter or Facebook.

We are physicians; our job is to lead patients toward health. We owe it to them to be sure that the information they are reading is of the same quality as we would give in our office, or want to get if (or, rather, when) we looked in the mirror and saw a patient staring back.