By Kimberly Reyes (@CommDuCoeur)

When 4 out of 5 doctors agree on something, people pay attention.  So when 4 out of 5 doctors say that mobile technology and software is crucial to ensuring the efficiency of their practice, the government took notice.  On February 17th, 2009, President Obama signed The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act as part of his federal stimulus package, and the message was clear: America needs to modernize its healthcare system.

HITECH established leadership, development, and security standards for certified electronic health records as well as electronic drug prescription, and provided federal incentives to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt health information technology in a meaningful way.  Now, the 70% of doctors who own a smartphone, PDA, or other internet-enabled device can access digital data and use it to do everything from diagnose a patient to prescribe treatment.

There are obvious benefits in making the HITECH shift: improvement in health care quality, prevention of medical errors, reduction of costs – and of course, there’s that $46,000.00 check.  The question is: while doctors make an effort to go digital, what can pharmaceutical companies do to take advantage of this reform and reinforce the relationships between doctors and their brand?

Enter e-Detailing, a handy little phrase to describe a high-tech way to brief physicians on new drugs.  The concept of detailing comes from traditional face-to-face sales meetings between a doctor and a pharmaceutical representative, which can sometimes inconvenience a physician’s busy schedule.  By embracing the art of e-Detailing, pharma companies can show their customers “hey, we care – and that’s why we’re going to make this easy for you.”

By now, e-Patient Dave has become an online sensation and leader of the Patient 2.0 revolution, which encourages people to be informed of their conditions and their treatment.  In order to keep up with a new force of pro-active patients, physicians need instant access to important information.  It is imperative that pharmaceutical companies know where and how these doctors are looking–and make the information they seek present on these platforms.

But anyone who knows anything about business knows that you can’t make the sale just by supplying someone with information about your product, which is why e-Detailing should be acknowledged as a supplement to the sales effort, not a substitute for it.  The best way to leverage e-Detailing is to continue the human interaction through a digital medium: video client support, online drug sample ordering, pricing and comparisons, etc.

Dr. David Blumenthal is a smart man.  He said, “Information is the lifeblood of modern medicine [and] health information technology is destined to be its circulatory system.”  Dr. Blumenthal’s understanding of the importance of instantaneously delivering accurate information to physicians is certainly one of the reasons why Obama tapped him as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.  HITECH is creating the mobile infrastructure for pharmaceutical companies to interact with more doctors in new and interesting ways.  What are some current practices and future trends in Health IT?  What are some possible challenges facing pharmaceutical companies who want to leverage Health IT?