by DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

The question seems almost nonsensical at first – your Twitter followers may be really outstanding people, but they’re not organic chemists or researchers. And your Facebook fans, while devoted, probably do not, generally speaking, know how to move a new drug through the FDA approval process.

Just the same, it’s a mistake to discount your social audiences as a source for insight and innovation. In fact, a wide range of category-leading companies do just that. While social media is not as planned or controlled as a focus group, there’s potential in polling the audience when it comes to research and development – and along the way you can even benefit the very people you’re polling.

Doing it right requires a three-step plan:

Understand what you want to accomplish. In this regard, social media is no different than traditional R&D research: Don’t ask existing or potential customers anything without a clear purpose behind “the ask.” What do you want to accomplish? Are you looking for feedback on a service (such as when consumers call into the customer care center) or improvement on a product or direction for a new advertising campaign? What about new products: Are you exploring the potential for one or looking at whether your customers have a need for a product that you have not thought of?

A solid roadmap will have goals covering what you hope to accomplish and clear indications of which social channels are – and are not – appropriate. Need to demo a product? You Tube makes sense. On the other hand, Twitter may be a better fit for simple questions requiring quick feedback. And tools like custom Facebook apps offer ways to bring customers and fans into the content creation process.

Be relevant in your questions and rigorous in your data collection. A solid roadmap lays out needs and expectations, but even the best plans can go astray if your research questions don’t balance your needs with the realities of social media, which often boil down to: Don’t be boring.

Tweets sending people to a 50-question survey or requests that Facebook followers sit through six sample commercials in search of the one they like best are unlikely to go anywhere. Instead, keep things short, clear and – most importantly – be ready to monitor and take feedback from the conversations that grow out of your public questions. They can be the source of tremendous insight.

Crunch the data and don’t leave the audience in the dark. One of the unique aspects of social media is that a lot of silos get knocked down – people have a great (and sometimes unreasonable) desire to peek behind the corporate curtain and know what’s going on. This is a powerful force and can jump-start your social-driven research – people love to be treated like insiders, and promising to give them a first peek at a new innovation, a new campaign or even just a slight change in how your company does something will motivate participation in your research.

The key is: You have to deliver on your promise. If you tell participants you’re working on a new way to talk about an established product and want their input, give them a peek before it’s rolled out to the public. Not doing so is bad form in the social landscape; promising to do it and then not delivering is an even bigger faux pas.

Whether it’s a one-drug boutique company or a global powerhouse, research and development is a constant part of pharma’s product and service lifecycles. While social media isn’t a substitute for formalized marketing research, it can be a powerful, low-cost augmentation to the toolbox.

by Jason Brandt (@jasondmg3)

For over half a century, the Breathalyzer has given law-enforcement officials a portable, fairly reliable instrument to test for, and prevent, driving under the influence.

However, when you start to listen to the critics of the technology complain that diabetics, dieters, hyperventilaters, mouthwash users, cold medicine users or smokers can have incorrect results (either damaging the sensors or inaccurately finding the subjects to be more, or less, inebriated than they may actually be) – you start to wonder:

If a Breathalyzer can pick up these other compounds, why can’t it be made to test for more than just alcohol?

Well, of course, you wouldn’t be the first to have this thought. It’s being called “disruptive” – but isn’t this the nature of all technological advances? Their goal is to make data available more rapidly and with less difficulty.

Obviously, diagnosing diabetes is an obvious place to start, as the existing technology already can pick it out sometimes. Additionally, you’ve probably heard over the years that dogs have been trained to identify the breath of people with cancer. Lung and breast cancer are being “sniffed” out in clinical tests now. Liver disease is, kidney disease, heart disease, even schizophrenia may be in the cards.

I can speculate about others, even though I’m not a scientist. Mental illnesses like anxiety, stress and panic attacks are often accompanied by physical manifestations that could be measured by checking how rapidly and shallowly you might be breathing.

And of course, there are pulmonary conditions like asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis and maybe even the common cold. Measuring the frequency and depth of breathing, in addition to the compounds exhaled, can help diagnose and manage conditions.

While we’re at it, perhaps it could compare the ambient temperature with your exhalation to see whether you’re running a fever.

I can envision the morning where puffing into a mouthpiece – part Breathalyzer, part spirometer, part thermometer – is as much a part of my routine as hopping on the scale. My simple efforts of a couple of seconds, using my scale, exhaler, and Magic Mirror (see Krissy’s Nov. 10 post), would be rapidly, brilliantly, noninvasively working to collect, analyze, report and share a wealth of information about me – all while I’m still stumbling around half asleep.

Now, if only one of them could floss for me and remember to pack my gym bag.

We’re excited to be participating in another UnNiched(micro) breakfast at the CUNY Graduate Center in October.

This one, however, will prove to be a little different from other events that UnNiched has hosted in the past. This one is a grown up show and tell, or, as they are calling it “Scratch, Sniff and Learn.”

That’s right. Your friends at UnNiched are asking you to submit your innovations in the world of pharma and healthcare.

From their website:

We’re launching what we hope are the first of many of what we’re calling “Scratch, Sniff and Learn” unNiched(micro) events.  This event is designed to highlight innovative programs, products and campaigns in the health marketing communications arena.  Attendees will not only get to hear about these innovations from presenters, but get hands-on experience “playing” with each innovation at specially prepared exhibits during the event.

We’re looking to showcase Web applications, innovative campaigns with real-world or virtual elements, mobile apps, designs and much, much more.  For example, we’ve already signed up the folks from Zemoga who will be showcasing the Teach Shirts they developed to aid public health communication in developing countries.

Submissions from any area of health marketing communications are encouraged, including social marketing, mobile communications, pharma communications, public relations and advertising. What’s more, the work of individuals, organizations and others showcased at the event will be promoted in other ways:

1. Case studies about featured innovations will be published on our popular wiki for health marketing communications pros, Living the Path
2. Innovations will be featured on our podcast, fyi: healthmarcomms
3. We’re planning other ways to showcase innovations, stay tuned for more

If you have an innovation you’d like to submit for consideration please fill out the application form by clicking here (Submission Deadline:September 26, 2011).

Pixels & Pills will, of course, be there with cameras rolling. We’ll talk to the hosts and the innovators and post the most interesting submissions on the blog.

We know you can’t wait!

unNiched(micro) Event: October 25, 2011, New York City
Innovation Submission Deadline: September 26, 2011
Event Registration Opens: September 15, 2011
Innovation Submission Form: Click Here

by DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

Economist and author Noreena Hertz says that, “In a world of data deluge and extreme complexity, we believe that experts are more able to process information than we can – that they are able to come to better conclusions than we could come to on our own.” She does not believe that this is a positive thing. “We’ve become addicted to experts,” she says. “We’ve surrendered our power, trading off our discomfort with uncertainty for the illusion of certainty that they provide.”

I happen to agree with her wholeheartedly. And I see this type of behavior going on with my colleagues and clients all the time.

Stuck for ideas? Can’t reach a decision? Planning next year’s activities? Call in an expert.

However, “Being a rebel,” Hertz says, “is about recognizing that experts’ assumptions and their methodologies can easily be flawed.”

My opinion on this might strike you as odd, if you think of me – of us – as experts, as some do. I see it differently, though.

We don’t pretend to know all of the answers to our clients’ problems off the tops of our heads. We don’t pretend to know their products better than they do, or their customers better than they do. We don’t pretend to know the future or what it will bring.

What we do is innovate. We understand both our clients and the digital technologies available well enough to be able to pair and partner them in new and better ways. Our expertise isn’t in knowing more than our clients do, necessarily – it’s in thinking differently and bringing them those new options.

There are certainly times to go to experts, whether you’re seeking a second opinion about a personal-health issue or requiring a specialized skill set at work.

But there are also times where an expert is the last thing you need. Times where what you need are not the leading opinions, but the new ones.

Sometimes you should be talking to everyday patients, nurses and doctors instead of the key opinion leaders in the field. Sometimes you should be talking to caregivers instead of reading textbooks. Sometimes you should be trying to learn what isn’t being done yet and asking “why not” – instead of finding out what’s already being done and asking “how can we do it too”.

Hertz’s point is that sometimes it’s the dissenting point of view – the non-expert who’s thinking differently – who makes all the difference in the world.  We’re proud to agree with that, and we suggest you give that line of thinking a try too.

This is the second installment in our special guest blog post series by Alexander Price, who teaches children with autism and works collaboratively with the families of children and adults with autism spectrum disorders, as well as the agencies that fund their treatment, to provide education, training, and conduct research towards finding solutions. Previously, Alexander worked for Community Options assisted living group homes for adults with developmental disabilities.

By Alexander Price (@asprice18)

Autism education uses a few different teaching strategies. For the purposes of this blog posts, I’m going to talk primarily about ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis), which I’ve been trained in and use every day at work. Without going into all of the eye-glazing details of ABA theory, it’s a data-based teaching technique. Basically, that means that the classroom staff records data on the learners’ responses to measure their rate of learning and the effectiveness of teaching techniques. The difficulty of accurately recording data comes in the form of behaviors, or episodes of aggression, which the teachers have to manage and subdue while running teaching trials.

New technologies can help to alleviate these difficulties by utilizing tablets for both data-taking and presenting materials. While tablets would not be able to replace teaching materials entirely, particularly those that rely on tactile sensation, they would provide a good way to teach skills while simultaneously taking response data. One component of teaching with ABA is receptively identifying objects, words, or numbers. This process is not unlike Rosetta Stone’s method of teaching. Typically, an array of approximately four pictures (or numbers, words, etc.) is placed before the learner, and they are asked to touch the specific object, or touch the object with specific characteristics.

To help visualize, a set of photos could include an apple, a backpack, a faucet, and basketball. The learner could be asked to touch each item (receptively identifying it by name), or could be asked to touch the one that is red/crunchy/food (the apple), what has a zipper/you put your notebook in/you put in your locker (the backpack), etc. If the teacher were to pre-program which questions they planned to ask, the tablet could both set up the array, and vary the pictures quicker than a person could; it could also take data on responses based on which item the learner touches, freeing the instructor up to run behavioral plans and error correction procedures.

As tablets become more versatile in their sizes and configurations, they could be adapted to a wide range of teaching methods. As the price of the technology comes down, tablets could be incorporated into students’ teaching routines, whether hand-held or built into the desks (to minimize damage/loss). As mobile technology changes, the special education field would be wise to keep up, and take advantage of new and unique teaching opportunities.

By Jason Brandt (@JasonDMG3)

In many ways technology is the realm of the rich. Here in the developed world, we’re used to the latest hardware and ubiquitous wi-fi to help us access the open-sourced wisdom of the entire internet. For those of us fortunate enough to be on that side of the digital divide, that entry gives us so much.

For those on the other side, it must be that much more frustrating to see how much is available once you have that access.

So perhaps it’s incumbent upon us to use it.

We’ve heard for literally years about the Great Recession that we’re mired in. Some economists say that it’s over, but the millions of unemployed and underemployed would argue with that.

These people having trouble making ends meet are not strangers. They’re not even just our friends and acquaintances. They’re also our patients – the people we work every day to help. So our work should not just be trying to develop digital solutions to improve their health care. It should be using those solutions to help their health care come cheaper.

I know that this may come as anathema in our capitalist society, but hear me out. The more patients who can afford healthcare, the more patients who can enter the realm of healthcare. There are many millions of patients for whom proper health care is out of reach: as one example, there are 45 million uninsured Americans.

Using technology to make healthcare more affordable: It’s already happening around us.

1. Telemedicine helps patients get medical treatment without having to pay to travel long distances.
2. Electronic health records improve the efficiency of practices, hospitals and the entire health care system, streamlining the process, speeding it up, and removing opportunities for error.
3. Generic biotech is a new frontier that could make some of the most complex new types of medicine less expensive. Just last month, some of the top companies discussed how they could join forces to develop biosimilars.

But how can we move this to our technology?

We talked about one example recently – in Russ’s post from May 26 about the potential of social networks for gathering patient data. Imagine the possibilities that social media offers. Done right, with the proper privacy protections in place, we could make the entire concept of patient registries obsolete.

While social is one of the fronts that we’re fighting this revolution on, the other is mobile.

We’ve talked before about how most of us (in the developed world) carry hugely sophisticated computers in our pockets every day. Are we using that power to give our patients tools to keep themselves healthy?

We may or may not still be in a recession, but we are definitely in the midst of a massive technology revolution. Let’s use the latter to help with the former.

By Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

You probably know that you should be telling stories in your work. But do you know how?

The concept of storytelling as an art form gained prominence in recent years in the business world – but I’d argue that it’s a back-to-basics survival mechanism more than a trend. We all work long hours, busy days, and get absolutely pummeled with information. We can’t handle any more presentations of factual information anymore.

What we fall back on is what has always worked best: storytelling. Tell me something I want to pay attention to – something that draws me in – something that makes me hold my breath to listen. That’s what I want, not another lecture.

Which leaves us with stories. But we also have to remember that we’re slap in the middle of the 21st century now, and we’re drowning in glorious storytelling options that would leave our narrative predecessors open-mouthed. Even the least technical among us can use freely available tools to create videos, soundtracks, typography, cartoons – any sort of story that we choose.

So why, why do so many of us still just pop a piece of clip art on a PowerPoint slide, stand in front of it and drone away?

Because we haven’t fully embraced the idea of trans-media storytelling.

As that link to an article by psychologist Pamela Rutlege notes, trans-media storytelling isn’t just choosing one medium. It’s remembering all of the variety available, considering the story that you need to tell, and figuring out how best to tell each part in each most appropriate medium.

Some brands have figured this out brilliantly – particularly, I think, in television. This is why some shows function perfectly on their own, but also have webisodes and websites with written narrative. Lost certainly did this (and needed to, because its mythology was way too unwieldy for one show), but even comedies like The Office do as well. You don’t have to be incredibly erudite or complex – you just have to give different parts of your story in different ways.

A lot of celebrities manage this quite well with their personal brands. On the red carpet they’re glamorous. On chat shows they’re funny. On their Twitter pages they’re endearingly everyday.

Why isn’t this adept shifting of gears moving into healthcare yet? Now, we don’t have to be Twitpic-ing pictures of ourselves shoe shopping with Nicole Richie or anything like that. We just need to realize two facts:

One, we must tell a story. It doesn’t have to be Dickens, but it has to be more than dry facts.

Two, we must spread that story generously throughout the media available to us. It’s time to move beyond “we’ll post our commercial on YouTube.” It’s time to figure out which chapters of the story play best in which form. Videos are for personal talk, conversational moments. Facebook is for quick sharing. Blogs are for longer-form riffs and small but fascinating data dumps. Commercials and print ads have their own parts to play.

It’s easier to give facts, but it’s a whole lot more effective to tell a story – and living in a trans-media world, there’s no other way to do it anymore.

By Carl Turner (@leftyrightbrain)

Pharma leaders are coming together at Digital Pharma West for an exciting exchange of innovative ideas in digital communication, especially in a heavily regulated industry. Whether social media is new territory or you are already executing a strategic multichannel communication plan, privacy is more important than ever.

Consider Zuckerberg’s Law:  Back in 2008, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg observed that people will share twice as much data as they did the year before and will share twice as much the year after that. Now that more physicians and patients are participating in social networks and private communities, data is everywhere.

Given that state of things, it seems obvious to have a compliance plan for information in the electronic health system and digital patient records. But have you thought about a plan that addresses the issue of privacy in a social world?

Staff, medical professionals and physicians are leaving their digital footprint when they post medical encounters, give basic medical advice or talk about their work on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social networks. They may even be conversing with patients or giving feedback about a colleague.

Social media is fantastic for improving collaboration and helping patients reach out to each other and the medical community. But it’s also too dangerous to take a Wild West approach. If you don’t already have a formal social media policy, you need one to protect your staff and patient privacy, and it should be included in your employee handbook. When in an electronic format, it can be easily updated and shared.

A social media policy that guides health care professionals in how to interact on social networks – and what to do and what not to do – ensures compliance with privacy laws. Employees talk about work – even doctors. They need to think about doctor-patient confidentiality in their online interactions and communicate in appropriate ways. For example, when talking about a patient, even if not called out by name, they may reveal details that identify the patient, a clear violation of HIPAA, and be subject to penalties and reputation damage.

This is a new area for many of us; protecting privacy needs to remain at the heart of health care. Responsible use of social media should be everyone’s priority. Join us at Digital Pharma West to learn best practices in navigating social media and how to use it without jeopardizing patient privacy.

Pixels and Pills will be there covering the event from start to finish. Join us in staying on the cutting-edge of digital technology. We hope to see you there!

By Russ Ward (@russcward)

Recently Ed Silverman wrote about Patient-Reported Outcomes on Internet Sites on Pharmalot – based on a study published in last month’s Nature Biotechnology that was conducted through online patient-support group Patients Like Me.

We – like you – are huge fans of Ed and his work, but this story really fascinated us, for reasons that Ed didn’t explicate.

The investigators analyzed posts by 149 ALS patients trying a particular off-label treatment – and, long story short, found that it didn’t work.

Obviously, 149 people’s Internet posts are not a substitute for the rigors of double-blind studies and the scientific method, as the study authors themselves noted. But the truth is that scientific discoveries often happen in less-than-rigorous ways: accidents and happenstance. After caveating their work as noted above, the authors concluded: “[T]his study reached the same conclusion as subsequent randomized trials, suggesting that data reported by patients over the internet may be useful for accelerating clinical discovery and evaluating the effectiveness of drugs already in use.”

As Ed noted the benefits to this type of investigation include speed, diversity and cost – but also the high level of engagement of the participants. But, Ed is too much of a responsible journalist to say the really important thing, because it’s opinionated and informal. So we’ll have to:

This is really fricking cool.

Not that the treatment didn’t work. That’s unfortunate…but while certainly very pertinent for the patients in this case, it’s not actually the biggest part of this story.

The real story here is the process. The idea that social networks could speed up the process of finding new ways of saving and improving lives. That is what’s so cool.

Now, of course we must be very careful not to read too much into online reports of treatment success or failure. Often the reports can’t even be validated, let alone be proven to be indicative of a larger trend.

But, just as it’s important to track online reports of treatment side effects, we should be noting these reports. This data is here for the mining, and it would be a disservice to our patients – and yes, to science – if we were to ignore it. Hypotheses originate from anecdotal evidence, and social networks allow us unprecedented ability to gather this anecdotal evidence.

By Andy Smith (@andysmithpalio)

There’s a treasure trove of high-value health information in government archives that can aid in the delivery of health care. Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) are joining forces to make this data available to the public and encourage innovative uses of it to help patients and health care providers.

By putting this wealth of data into the hands of patients and health care professionals, new insights, applications, products and services can be developed to increase health care education, influence behaviors and improve performance of the health system. Learn more about how increasing access to health information can benefit patients and providers at the unNiched(micro) Breakfast HHS/IOM Health Data-palooza Satellite Event, June 9, 2011 beginning at 7:45 a.m. ET.

Through this initiative, data will be easily accessible and provided to the public free of charge to facilitate growth and development of the health care eco system. It will include a range of information including national, state, regional and potentially county-level prevalence of disease, quality, and cost as well as evidence-based programs and policies that have improved performance across many of these measures. Technologists, business, academia and public health professionals can then use the data to compare performance, share best practices and uncover new modes of treatment and services to improve health performance such as developing online games that educate individuals about community health or by tracking local issues.

The culmination of health data and technology are critical components of any effort to educate and persuade providers and patients to improve behaviors and health care outcomes. To learn more about the Government 2.0 movement to unleash health data and make it publicly available, participate in this complimentary satellite unNiched (micro) breakfast event where attendees can:

• View a portion of Health Data Initiative Forum proceedings remotely
• Network with others interested in marrying health data and technology to improve communication, outcomes and spark behavior change in patients and health providers
• Hear executives from HHS and other organizations discuss the implications of the Forum for innovation, outcomes and health communications

By increasing the availability of data, patients and professionals can explore and analyze data and gain the necessary insight to move from awareness to action. Pixels and Pills will be live-streaming the breakfast and the exciting discussions that take place at the event. We hope you’ll join us!

Date: Thursday, June 9, 2011
Location: CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
Website: http://www.unniched.com
Agenda: http://unniched.com/unnichedmicro-hhsiom-health-data-palooza-satellite-event
Registration: http://healthdataunniched.eventbrite.com