Digital Pharma news

Earlier this month, Julie Papanek of Canaan Partners spoke with the Wall Street Journal about the changing needs of the pharmaceutical industry. She mentioned: 

How pharma’s traditional physician marketing model is breaking down because many major health systems aren’t allowing sales reps in the door The push for drug firms to prove their products actually benefit patients — especially in the real world The need to develop better technology solutions that help optimize promotion on social media now that the FDA has provided clarity on how drug firms can advertise via this channel

The Wall Street Journal suggests that entrepreneurs and innovators are not paying enough attention to the growing and pressing needs of pharmaceutical companies in the digital health arena. But is this really the case? 

Yes and no. 

Yes, more innovations are needed. But it’s primarily a matter of aligning product market fit than the need to produce a lot more solutions. 

And, no, innovators are not ignoring Big Pharma, they’re scrambling to get in the door (more on this below).

The key to digital health success in pharma will be about understanding the unique and changing needs of the industry and developing solutions — sometimes via a process of co-creation — that work well for drug firms. 

Let’s take another look at the industry’s needs. As Papanek mentioned, marketing and clinical data collection and mining are two. Additional areas of greatest need include: 

Strategic and organizational support to determine the best ways to commercialize existing assets and competencies in diagnostics, genetics, Big Data and more Development of a digital health pipeline that will accelerate the introduction of profitable and scalable products and services that will boost brand loyalty, replace a portion of lost revenue due to expiring patents, etc.

Technology won’t meet all these needs. People with specialized knowledge and an innovative mindset will also play a big role. 

There are other factors at play. I spend a lot of time looking closely at investment data, keeping track of global digital health innovations and communicating with pharma executives about their needs in health tech. This work has taught me that: 

Pharmaceutical executives are flooded with digital health opportunities: Many startups and established companies are coming to drug firms with a range of innovations, from mobile health solutions to smart pills. Executives and leaders at these firms are having trouble triaging these innovations to determine which ones will meet key organizational, business and health goals.Drug firms are starting to turn to companies with multiple products and services for help: For example, earlier this year Qualcomm announced a number of deals with pharmaceutical companies to provide key digital health services and support technology innovations via venture funding.Companies are working hard to drive digital health innovation from within: A number of firms have created internal innovation groups that are responsible for locating, developing and supporting the integration of digital health technologies into their operations. There is a special need for this work in developing countries like Brazil and China. 

Overall, the digital health innovation picture in Big Pharma is a lot brighter than the headlines would have you believe. But, there’s clearly a lot more work to be done. 

The next few years are going to be very interesting.

Via Plus91

A deep dive by the think tank Center for Talent Innovation indicates pharma and payers need to widen their definition of health when communicating with women.

Via Richard Meyer

How can the pharma and healthcare industry thrill on social media?
“The next time you hear a social media myth, question it. Ask for the proof and ask out loud” – Dan Zarrella, social media scientist

Pharma – a highly regulated industry – has been notoriously slow at taking up social media. It’s not surprising when the rules for how they can and can’t use social media are prohibitively vague. But over the past few years the myth that pharma companies can’t use social media has been unravelled and conversations now focus on ‘how can pharma do social?’ This movement brings about unique challenges, but one thing is for certain – as more companies recognise the importance of social media it’s time for pharma to be brave and take their conversations to the next level.

What does being brave look like in pharma?
Bravery comes in many shapes and forms and what may be seen as basic social media practice in other industries can be courageous in the pharma industry. While brands like Innocent and Oreo are able to push boundaries by responding to online trends within a matter of seconds, or delivering distinctive and humorous content, pharma is somewhat conservative due to navigating regulatory rules. But this doesn’t mean that pharma companies should hold back - having a social media strategy is more important than ever in order to connect with audiences.

Back to basics
So how can pharma begin to stand out from the crowd? And what benefit will this bring? Firstly it’s important to get the basics right. By having online conversations and engaging appropriately instead of just pushing out content on social networks, companies can build trust and respect from their followers. Johnson & Johnson do this well by engaging with consumers, healthcare professionals and media consistently on their networks in a way that encourages followers to contribute to the conversation.

Another way that pharmaceutical businesses can participate in social media is to move fast when they receive comments online. To do this effectively all stakeholders need to be prepared and scenarios need to be planned for like Boehringer Ingelheim, who responds to comments quickly and effectively.

Pharma companies should also use platforms effectively and provide their audiences with informative and educational content. Bayer HealthCare provides followers with useful and relevant content,which means their content is shared far and wide.

Learning from non-profit health campaigns

no-friends-2.jpg

For those companies who have already established a successful social media presence, it’s time to step it up a notch. This may take greater investment of time and energy but it doesn’t mean that pharma can’t be courageous. Pharma can learn from campaigns by others in the healthcare space/arena, such as the [Columbian League Against Cancer Cancer tweets that spread out virtual cancer through Twitter and the recent Age UK 'No Friends' (above) that responded to Facebook’s 'Friends' campaign with posters highlighting loneliness among older people.

These campaigns were successful because they were brave, emotive and raised awareness of important health issues – loneliness and cancer.  By taking key learnings from these creative campaigns pharma can produce exciting content that really resonates with their audiences.

Strong foundations
The shift in social media involvement by pharma companies over the past few years to understand the benefits that it can bring is a good start, but pharmacompanies now need to ensure they are getting the basics right to form the foundations of their social media strategy. These strong foundations enable them to begin to stretch the limits and gain recognition for their efforts.  Without this investment in a social future, the pharmaceutical industry is in danger of getting left behind.

Via Plus91

Social media platforms refer to the interaction among the people that involves creation, sharing and exchange of information and ideas in virtual networks and communities. However, use of these social media tools for marketing pharma content is still debatable. The rationale behind this is that the regulatory teams of several pharma companies demand the preventionof comments or sharing features resulting in only a one way interaction,which in turn deprives theessence of social media marketing. However, with the impact of these tools, there is an increased adoption rate of these platforms for strategic decisions.

Efforts of pharma sector to leverage the benefits of social media tools to widen their customer base, strengthen customer relationship and enhance brand performance further fuels the usage of social media pharma and healthcare marketing. Other major aspects favorable for pharma sector are building investor relations, corporate communication and customer service at the corporate level. The involvement of regulatory authorities in drafting and issuing guidance for use of interactive media for drugs and biologics proves to be instrumental in deciding the importance of social media marketing in pharma industry. For instance,in second week of January 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a guidance draft for industry that needs to fulfill the regulatory requirements for post marketing submissions of interactive promotional media for animal and human drugs and biologics. Through this draft, the US-FDA provided clarity on working with bloggers and content creators to disseminate branded information.

Incorporation of consumer feedback and their experiences would prove decisive for the companies in the course of novel drug development and other crucial strategy building. Hence social media involvements are further expected to increase product sales in the near future. For instance, Novartis has initiated the use of social media platforms to enhance the sales of its over-the-counter drugs such as Comtrax, Bufferin and Orofar. Another illustration for the use of these social media platforms is by Johnson & Johnson that uses these platforms for crisis management during recall of its products. It has used these social media platforms for apologizing to the consumers for irregularities found in its manufacturing plant by U.S. FDA. It is company’s mode of being personally, emotionally and socially in touch with its clients.

The pharma and healthcare social media market can be analyzed by the extent of use of social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, etc. by pharma industries along with benefit and risk ratio analysis of these tools in healthcare. In addition, impact or effect of these tools on healthcare stakeholders such as hospitals, patients/consumers, healthcare professionals and biotechnology companies coupled with a geographical landscape focusing on the popularity of these tools also can be provided. The geographical landscape includes the analysis of four major regions namely North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and RoW.

The major factors favoring the growth of the market are increased expenditure by pharmaceutical companies for online advertising along with increasing adoption rates of online marketing tools by the consumers. As per few research studies in the year 2012, the overall pharmaceutical and healthcare spending increased nearly by 45 percent year-on-year to approximately USD 1.1billion of which 6 percent represented online advertising costs. This revenue is generated through paid advertisements and subscriptions from various electronic devices and unique IP addresses. On the other hand, the disadvantages and risk factors of these platforms such as privacy and security in question along with improper content validation are some of the issues that might pose the challenge for the growth of the market. Some of the companies engaged in use of social media are Johnson & Johnson, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Inc., Novartis and Bayer AG.

 

Via Plus91