By DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

…of information, that is.

Medical Marketing & Media’s Ben Comer just published an article on the results of a survey done by MedTera, and that’s what they found.

To be more official, here are a few of the numbers:

1. 95% of patients want to get more information about managing their disease.
2. 77% of patients didn’t get any written information at all from their doctor.
3. And here’s the kicker: the reason that MedTera did the survey was because they found that as many as 71% of people who had just been diagnosed with a chronic illness were going off their meds in the first month.

According to Comer’s article, MedTera will be releasing additional findings on exactly which tools patients find most useful in the next couple of months. We’re looking forward eagerly to seeing that.

In the meantime, while these statistics aren’t illustrating facts that we didn’t know before, they are still certainly startling. I mean, come on, NINETY-FIVE percent of patients want more information? We all knew that it was an important issue, but I’m not sure even the most vocal critic would have estimated the number that high. And I’m not sure that anyone could justify leaving that number the way it is – especially since we have more ways than ever to get information to patients about their health and their diseases.

No, we’re not always sure which channel to use.

No, we don’t have direction from the FDA yet.

No, we don’t have a lot of precedent to go from.

No, our legal and regulatory colleagues aren’t always going to be on our side.

But these statistics are more proof than ever that, even though we may not have all the answers or support that we would like just yet, we really can’t wait around until we do.

Patients are, indeed, starving – and even if we aren’t quite sure how to go about giving them a five-star gourmet meal, we’ve at least got to start working together to give them more nourishment.

Last year’s ePatient Connections conference was the event of the year, attracting some of the most influential voices in the industry and garnering lots of positive feedback from the attendees.  Pixels & Pills sat down with conference leader Kevin Kruse to talk about why we all should be attending this year’s event.

1. ePatient Connections 2009 was a huge success.  What are you doing this year to top last year’s conference?

Yeah, last year was our inaugural event and nobody really knew what to expect. It was really nice to get the feedback. Many people said it was the best conference they’ve ever been to but even better are the stories of how it led to a lot of breakthroughs for so many people. Sloan Rachmuth started HEALTHeME partly from a conversation she had with another participant, “e-Patient Dave” has talked about how it opened up the life science community to him in good ways, it even nudged some folks at Boston Scientific to do some social media pilot projects.

This year we’re keeping the short-format talks, the amazing gift bag, and 1-on-1 sessions, but we’re adding three new tracks. Our focus is going to be on Social Media for Health, Mobile Health and Games for Health, which are the three areas where all the innovation is happening. It’s pretty exciting because we’ve got all the biggest names coming from those segments to speak and share their cases.

2. How do you think the discussion has changed since last year?  What are some key breakthrough/trends that are affecting the ePatient Community?

Last year the focus was really about the new channels, or new media – how we use Facebook and Twitter and YouTube to reach and engage patients. While there is still a lot of interest on these fundamentals, of course the real power is never in the medium, it’s in the content and relationships. So this year our focus is really on how do you not just connect with e-patients, but how do you connect in a way that leads them to take action. How do you spark healthy behavior change.

To this end, we think an underutilized secret weapon is story-telling. We are often moved by other people’s stories, our emotions fire up when we hear stories more than facts. So this is an unofficial theme for this year. We’ve got Dr. Vic Stretcher coming to share some of his latest research in this area. We have Novartis coming to show how they used the power of storytelling, in film, to engage the Cystic Fibrosis community. And we have people like Dave deBronkart and CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen coming to share their personal stories of becoming empowered patients, and they’ll be autographing copies of their books, which in turn will hopefully motivate others.

3. Can you explain some key features of Innovation Island and what you hope to achieve through it?

Well, our goal for e-Patient Connections is to make it “a community not a conference, an experience not an event.” One person who attended last year said that it was more like a Broadway play than a conference which I take as a compliment!

With Innovation Island our goal is to people actually play with all the cool technology that’s out there, and in some cases, talk to the people who actually invented it. This is where you come to see the future and begin to figure out how you might use it today to advance your own business goals. We’re going to have David Rose from Vitality showing off his digital pill bottle cap that a recent study shows leads to 98% medication adherence–people should be crawling all over that!  We’ll also let people play with iPad health apps, hacked Wii boards for health games, augmented reality and QR codes and lot more.

4. What sessions or workshops are you looking forward to the most?

Wow, that’s tough, and I don’t want to play favorites! [laughs]  I think the keynote lineup is absolutely gold. Vic Strecher is a giant in his field so I’m really psyched to hear him present, the Novartis “Becoming Christopher” project is one of the most creative things I’ve seen in a long time, and Margaret Morris from Intel Digital Health Labs will be sharing her social and mobile research that hasn’t even been published yet which is cool. Oh, and it’s huge that we have the FDA DDMAC coming to present as well, I think everyone will be on the edge of their seats and taking notes for that one.

5. Pecha Kucha is a pretty interesting challenge – can you give us a sneak peek on what to expect?

I’m glad I don’t have to do one! This is where you have to do your presentation in exactly 20 slides, with 20 seconds for each slide. The slides actually auto advance so ready or not you need to keep it moving. Last year this segment was clearly a crowd favorite.

This year we have Lisa Emrich, who is a patient blogger and has been active in online communities since ‘97. Jeanne Barnett runs CysticFibrosis.com and will talk about the patient journey using a Wizard of Oz metaphor, which will be really cool. And Jonathan Richman and Kurt Mueller – two of the smartest guys in this space – will also be doing pecha kucha sessions.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images North America)

By Kimberly Reyes (@CommDuCoeur)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed his controversial Healthcare Reform Bill into law, with the objective of making healthcare more affordable and expanding coverage to the 32 million Americans that are currently uninsured, including self-employed individuals and low-income families.

Groups such as Physicians for Reform and Physicians for a National Health Program reflect the general endorsement from healthcare practitioners nationwide, but strictly from a bird’s-eye perspective.  Overall, “treating someone without insurance is the most expensive way to provide care. Rather than having the cost and risk of their care pooled with others, the cost falls directly on the patient, who cannot afford it, and is taken on by hospitals and clinics struggling to stay open,” notes practicing internist “PalMD,” author of The White Coat Underground.  However, as the effects of healthcare reform begin to take shape, so are concerns that doctors are being stretched thin by the influx of new patients.

Believe or not, Pharma is projected to play a significant role in alleviating the burden imposed on HCPs.  Pharmacists are a critical component of our nation’s healthcare system, working in tandem with doctors to provide comprehensive patient care.  According to a 2008 position paper released by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy in support of healthcare reform, “Pharmacists have extensive clinical knowledge and expertise in the use of medications, and are one of the most accessible of all health care professionals.”  Furthermore, their guidance on medication compliance and healthy living could potentially keep patients from flooding emergency rooms.

Drugmakers are expected to assist this effort with the proper educational tools for both physicians and patients on medication information and health management.  Millions of new patients walking through hospital doors creates a demand for increased health literacy, and a crucial opportunity for Big Pharma to reclaim its battered image.

Pixels & Pills has previously covered the HITECH Act, which provides incentives for hospitals and HCPs to adopt the widespread use of electronic medical records.  This will become an important venue in helping facilitate the cooperation and coordination between doctors and pharmacists as they are united by healthcare reform and the changing patient landscape.  As a result of the HITECH Act, treating physicians have adopted mobile technologies and are turning to the Internet as a vital resource in their practice.  It is imperative that Pharmaceutical companies make information on their drugs available and accessible to the doctors who look to technology to alleviate the strain from increased patient demands.

Beyond these points, the implications of Obama’s historic bill are undoubtedly widespread throughout the healthcare community.  What are some other ways that Pharma can contribute to healthcare reform?

By Paul Harrington

R.I.P., CVA.

Friends, Romans, and countrymen, lend me your ears: I come not to praise the CVA, but to bury it.

The CVA – or Core Visual Aid – the most commonly used sales tool in the armamentarium of pharmaceutical sales is dead, dead, dead. Certainly, for decades it had served us well: it gave pharma reps a “show-n-tell” tool with glossy pictures, snappy pullouts, and easy-to-read safety information.

The days of the CVA were heady times indeed. Ad agencies created massive image campaigns to fill them. Media companies sold miles of ad space to promote them. Printing companies chopped down million of trees to fuel the reams of paper need to manufacture them.

But a funny thing happened on the way from the sales rep’s car to the doctor’s office: the CVA started getting left behind. “Ho-hum,” said the physician, “I’ve seen all this before. I don’t want your glossy Madison Avenue schtick anymore. Give me my samples and off with you! Git now!”

Suddenly, a CVA wasn’t a magic door opener. It was a static, 20^th Century leftover from The Cosby Show. The CVA was DOA. Moment of silence…

IVA ASAP!

The 21^st Century is the Era of the IVA: the Interactive Visual Aid. And it will be a vital, liberating time indeed.

If the CVA is a script the rep uses to tell the doctor a story, what exactly is an IVA? Think of it as the IMAX version of the script, the flat story brought to life with moving pictures, bold colors, energetic characters, motivating scene changes, and an easy-to-follow, engaging performance.

If you think of an IVA as just an electronic version of the old paper CVA, you’re selling yourself – and the medium – short. Think of an IVA more like an informational kiosk at the airport or a convention. It’s a two-way exchange of exploration and education, and medicine will be all the better for its implementation. Charts and diagrams animate to tell a fuller story. Patients walk, speak and escort the viewer on a tour of their lives. References and study designs appear in abbreviated or complete detail simply by touching on a fact. Studies can energetically unfold and tell a fuller story. And calls can be customized to meet the needs of a particular physician or sales initiative. The days of folding over a brochure and flipping through dog-eared pages are over.

Here’s how it works: a pharmaceutical sales representative wakes up on Monday morning and turns on her laptop computer. (If she works for a cutting edge company, her computer is one a slew of new tablet computers that are lightweight, slim, and built for show-n-tell.) The rep logs in and gets a new directive from HQ on a recent study and how it can improve patient outcomes; an updated call flow is automatically downloaded to her computer, along with a learning module or implementation guide that instructs her on how to craft a compelling sales call utilizing the new information.

When the rep calls on Dr. Feelgood later on in the day, she’s able to catch and hold his attention in the hallway by utilizing the stopping power of her new IVA. In fact, the good Doctor spends more time than usual with the rep, because the interactive presentation of the new data has captured his interest and engrossed him, and he’s taking an active role in the presentation.

An IVA offers a fluid stage that allows figures and studies to dynamically unfold and telling a compelling story. Patient profiles come to life with patients who can move, speak, explain (and complain), and demonstrate results. Touch-screen interfaces – the latest and greatest in the technological advances that the IVA can leverage – allow a physician to interact with and manipulate the information to answer their questions. And reps can easily stay on message, on label and focus more on selling.

OMG!

Let’s not mince words: making the move from CVA to IVA isn’t easy or cheap. Anyone who’s made the leap from regulation TV to HDTV knows that stepping up the technology ladder is expensive and sometimes trying, and IVAs are no exception.

Certainly, there are the hard costs: outfitting your sales force with computers/hardware to use is not cheap – and like any computer, they need constant repairs, updates and upgrades. Then there are the softer costs, like training, technical support, high-speed connections, yada yada yada.

Another cost factor to consider is the content. Whereas your ad agency used to simply set up a photo shoot for this year’s CVA and campaign, they now have to create interactive content that can be utilized in the IVA: HD video, sound, animations, and so forth – this can add extra hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of campaign creation.

However – unclench those muscles – these creative assets can be applied across multiple mediums (such as websites, trade shows, and advertising outlets like smart phones) and if crafted wisely, will actually yield more creative bang for your buck. We’re in the 2.0 age of the digital revolution, and the costs will only continue to drop as more and more outlets clamor for your marketing dollar.

XOXO IVA.

If you embrace the day and recognize the massive advantage an IVA offers your sales force, you may find that you actually can cut costs while improving output. You’ll help the environment by cutting down dramatically on paper use. You may even see your competitors struggle to react to your bold initiatives.

What’s the first step? Talk to your ad agency: if they’re not up to speed on how to deploy interactive sales tools for your company, find one that can. This isn’t the wave of the future: the water is already upon you and up to your knees.

So rest in peace, ol’ CVA. You were good and did us proud, but your time has passed. Vive la IVA!!

This post is the first in a week-long series that asks “What would the government regulate?”  We’ll be talking about government concerns, healthcare scares, the impact of reform, and more.

By Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

The FDA needs to let the pharmaceutical industry provide information online. Yes, there’s been plenty of disagreement over exactly how this ought to happen, but this fact is indisputable.

It encourages transparency. It creates an environment in which pharma companies are pressured make more information public. Moreover, it gives patients vital information.

To do this, there needs to be a balance of control. The FDA needs to let go of the reins to a certain degree, yes; but also, pharma needs to let go in order to let the patient speak.

Right now, the situation is like the three monkeys – speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. The FDA is afraid of seeing pharma companies promote off label.Pharma companies are afraid of hearing patients announce adverse reactions. Patients are afraid that nobody is helping them when they speak.
The thing is, that last one is the worst – and it’s also the one happening most often.

Maybe a Bill of Rights would help, just like the real one, but showing pharma what they are allowed to do – instead of just catching them when they do something wrong. Pharma should have the the right to…

• Freedom of speech. The FDA should allow pharma to talk.

• Protect own security against unreasonable intrusion by the law. Pharma should be allowed to keep its intellectual property secrets.

• Due process of the law, including a proper trial and suitable punishment.

• Have rights even when they’re not specifically spelled out. This is one of the biggest current problems. Pharma is afraid to act in the social media realm because it is new, and no current regulations apply to it specifically. Therefore, future regulations on the digital space should be specific enough to be workable, but general enough to apply to both current technologies and those not yet created. The communication itself is what’s important, not the platform on which it’s done.

Now it’s your turn. What rights would you give pharma? Patients? Government regulators?

By Jim Mittler, PhD, Medical Director (@jim_mittler)

We all know that the social media revolution is happening and it cannot be stopped—this is according to the exponential growth of social media over the past several years. It has fundamentally changed the way in which information is disseminated and the way people communicate throughout the world today. While I believe change is a good thing, what we do with social media to improve public health communications remains to be seen. Sure, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), whose mission is to protect the health of United States citizens, is participating quite well in social media. They have Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages, create widgets to add to Web sites, and actively blog; all of which serve to promote general health and release information on emerging health threats, like the swine flu. But how much of this information is really reaching patients and making an impact?

According to a recent report from Manhattan Research, patients and caregivers are harnessing the Web for health-related information like never before. Use of Web-based health resources has grown to nearly 160 million people in the United States in 2009. In fact, the number of people using the Web as their main source for health information has surpassed the number who get health information from their doctor. This is troubling in some ways because much of the information on the Web, and particularly the interactive discussions occurring in the social media realm, is unregulated. Clearly, the government puts out credible information, as do pharmaceutical companies because of FDA regulation. General health Web sites (eg, WebMD) or disease-specific advocacy groups (eg, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society) produce great patient-oriented information about medical conditions and they host blogs, messages boards, and chat rooms that build a network of support among affected patients and caregivers. While social media is great for finding information and providing support to users, the open exchange of information through unmoderated message boards, chat rooms, and Twitter can increase the potential for dissemination of noncredible and possibly erroneous health information, which could be harmful to patients. Even more troubling are the “snake oil salesmen” who pose as experts and offer “medicinal” products that are untested and unregulated and, therefore, are not safe. Despite these pros and cons of social media for health information, we must accept it and harness its power to improve public health and support patients in the best way possible.

The Web and social media offer convenient channels for obtaining health information, but who is using these resources?

According to recent survey data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), users of the Web are more likely to be younger, more educated, have a higher economic status, and are White or Asian vs those who reported no Internet use. This is referred to as the “digital divide” – the gap between those who can access and have the skills to effectively use information technology and those who cannot. This concept is not new. Despite the efforts of many organizations who seek to close the digital divide, it still exists according to NTIA 2009 data.

Coincidentally, there is another divide in the United States that mirrors the digital divide. Healthcare disparities are the differences or gaps in the care experienced by one population compared to another population. The 2009 National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) shows that some Americans received worse healthcare than others – specifically, minorities (ie, African Americans and Hispanics) and the poor had worse access and use of healthcare, and when they did, it was of lower quality.

Can social media help close the healthcare disparity in the United States?

Several interesting observations of those who use the Web and social media suggest that it has the potential to narrow healthcare disparities. The good news is that the digital divide may be closing more quickly as people shift away from home computers and laptops to access the Web by using Web-enabled mobile devices (smart phones) more frequently. Interestingly, uptake of mobile devices to access the Web has been swift among African Americans. According to a 2009 Pew Internet report, African Americans are the most active users of the mobile Internet and their use is growing the fastest. Daily access to the Web via a mobile device by African Americans has increased 141% between 2007 and 2009. This suggests that minority populations who are most affected by health disparities are becoming increasingly connected to the Web and, therefore, have a wealth of health-related information at their fingertips.

If social media has the power to disseminate health information and support patients, it is important to know how those affected by health disparities are utilizing social media. An interesting report on the type of social media used for health-related information provides some insight on the implications for health communication. Using data from the Health Information Nation Trends Study, Chou et al found that all users most often turned to social networking sites more often than online support groups or blogs; however, significantly more nonwhite Americans used social networking sites than white Americans (45% vs 31%, respectively [P<.001]). These data suggest a unique opportunity to target minority populations with health information via social networking sites.

Where revolution meets reform.

The recently enacted Health Care Reform Act will expand access to health insurance coverage and reduce the costs associated with healthcare. Essentially, it will bring healthcare to more Americans and have an impact on health disparities in the United States. Parallel to this act, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) includes billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to providers and hospitals who adopt health information technology into their practices. The health information technology sections of ARRA (termed HITECH) are designed to improve healthcare quality, safety, efficiency, and reduce health disparities; engage patients and families; improve care coordination; ensure adequate privacy and security protections for personal health information; and improve public health.

The components of health information infrastructure are complex. However, one major component is the creation of electronic health records (EHRs). Ensuring meaningful and timely access to EHRs will be important to engage patients to take responsibility for their own healthcare. This can be achieved through a secure patient portal, which can be a standalone Web site or integrated into the Web site of the healthcare provider. A patient portal is more than a link to a patient’s medical record. It can also take on multiple functionalities that are akin to a social networking site. Patient portals allow interactive communication with a physician. Patients can ask questions about their disease or treatment and provide comments to their physician by self reporting disease symptoms or side effects of therapy. Patients can schedule “social events” (ie, office appointments) through the portal. Healthcare providers can also post individualized educational materials to a patient’s splash page and suggest links where patients can find credible information on preventative health measures, diseases, and/or medications.

Patient portals represent a new form of health-related social media that can enhance the direct interaction between patients and healthcare providers and dissemination of valuable health information. Minorities who are affected by the health disparities in the United States are rapidly adopting Web-enabled mobile devices and tend to preferentially use social networking as a means to gather health-related information.

As patient portals become commonplace in the future, we may see healthcare disparities diminish thanks to power of social media.

This post is part of a week-long series centered around the theme of communication. This week, we’ll identify important communities and provide tips and guidelines on how to effectively reach them.

By Russ Ward (@russcward)

Patient communities are, to many pharma executives, terrifying. They’re the Wild West – an untamed land where people say whatever they want to whomever they want. There is no regulatory-committee-approved language.. There is no stipulation against off-label promotion. There is no official method of reporting adverse events. There is no fair balance. Patient communities are, in short, conversations. Real ones.

Moreover, as online-community expert Dan Shafer said way back in 1999: “Perhaps the biggest single misconception about virtual communities is that they can be created.” So not only can you not control them, but it doesn’t even work if you try to create your own “safe” one? What to do? Stay as far away as possible, is what many have decided. But that does a huge disservice to the communities and the companies both.
Consider another quote, this one the tagline of the e-Patients.net community: “Because health professionals can’t do it alone.” This is probably a startling quote for many people. Perhaps to a highly trained HCP, it smacks of hubris on the patient’s part. “Do they think they know better than I do?” Perhaps to a pharma executive, it is exhausting. “Now patients want all of the complicated information as well as the softer patient-education materials? How are we going to do that?” But perhaps what it should say is something different: “We’ve always done this, but now we’ve banded together.”

There have always been involved patients: unwilling to passively accept their diagnoses and medications, they are the ones leading their care teams. They’re reading scientific journals; they’re comparing and contrasting different treatment options. The difference is that a patient community enables two things:

• Sharing. A group dealing with the same condition can compare notes, share findings, argue the relative merits of different studies or regimens.
• Encouragement. Patient are often discouraged, in small or large ways, from getting too proactive. Well-intentioned (and healthy) doctors and loved ones say things like “trust him”.

Historically, we’ve been more willing to trust our peers to provide insight and opinions that we will believe in, rather than listen to “experts”, but Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer survey found that while trust in companies, governments and “experts” is up, trust in peers has fallen. What does this mean for projects like the Society for Participatory Medicine, which runs e-Patients.net? Not much. Those are small percentage changes, and the movement is much bigger than that.

The best known of the e-Patients is ePatient Dave. In addition to his community participation, he’s got a blog and a prolific Twitter. His conversations give you a sense of the purpose of patient communities. They’re discussing billing errors, sharing interesting links, talking about news in their disease space. They’re commiserating, sharing jokes, talking about things utterly unrelated to their medical conditions. They are, in short, having a conversation. A real one. And they’re not going anywhere.

What should pharma do? Listen. Not try to orchestrate or create or pontificate. Just listen. See what matters to these patients, what they like, what they need, and what they’re thinking. Yes, report the adverse events. But mostly, just show a human face – one with two ears.

By DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

Microblogging? Sooo 2008.

If you listen to the hype that emanated from SXSW, it’s all about location, location, location.

Not very long ago, the idea to make it possible for people to transmit short bursts of information to their group of friends was groundbreaking. Now that Facebook made their status updates a big broader, and Twitter has hit the tipping point, that’s not new – it’s de rigeur. I bet you use one or both of those sites. And I bet you’ve “thought in Tweets” because of it – had one of those moments where you were listening to the radio or having a conversation and hit upon a pithy phrase that you simply HAD to go use as your status update.

It’s okay, don’t be embarrassed. We all do it.

The point is, we all do it. Microblogging is part of our automatic thought process now. That didn’t take very long, did it?

Next is location – making use of the fact that so many social networks are accessed from mobile devices to pinpoint the user’s location and provide them geographically useful information. One of the better-known services was Dodgeball, which was founded in 2000, sold to Google in 2005, shut down by Google in 2009, and re-emerged as Foursquare with the same founders, also last year.

Popular in major cities, it enables you to tell your friends where you’ve just arrived. Users can win “collect-them-all” style “badges” for their accounts for different feats – checking in at enough consecutive bars, for instance, or checking in very late, earns you a variety of partier-appropriate badges. The user to check in the most often at a particular destination in the last month can win the title of “mayor” of that place. Destinations can be anything from restaurants to airports to shops.

So what? What does a bar-hopper’s iPhone app have to do with healthcare?

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Consider the utility of a app for over-active bladder sufferers that points them to the nearest public restroom. Consider the utility of an app for travelers that immediately directs them to the nearest chemist, surgeon or urgent care center. Consider the utility of an app that could alert you when your elderly relative suffering from dementia leaves a prescribed geographic area.

Some of these already exist today, and many more are currently under development.

Your patients don’t stay at home any more than you do. They have lives to live, people to be there for, careers to manage, the world to see. How can you help them do that?

by Russ Ward (@russcward)

Earlier today, we tweeted about an article from a 2006 issue of Businessweek entitled “Big Pharma’s Nurse Will See You Now” and recommended that our readers check out the comments.

One response comes from a patient with Multiple Sclerosis named “Steph,” who appears to be grateful for the education and compliance monitoring she received from a nurse specializing in Rebif, a drug used to treat MS.  “Steph” emphasizes that the choice to take Rebif was entirely her own, and thanks the Rebif company for the service.  Another reader named “Karen” adds that the service is well-suited to nurses (rather than pharmacists, as another reader suggested) because the patients require their “personal touch.”  Finally, “Nancy” continues the positive conversation about nurse-pharma collaborations by agreeing that patients need help with compliance from well-informed nurses.

So what does this all mean?

For one thing, a lot of the readers commenting on the article claim to be nurses.  A recent study by Nicholson Kovac shows that 87% of the 292 nurses surveyed use the Internet for both business and pleasure.  83% of the nurses that go online are viewing healthcare-related information, and 77% use or have visited Facebook.

As we’ve observed, nurses not only browse, they talk.  And a lot of the time, they talk to each other.  The popular online community allnurses.com has over 400,000 members comprised of nurses and nursing students.  They share news and information with each other, discuss hot topics, share advice, and recommend products to each other.  And there are others: Nursinglink, which is owned by Monster, makes nursing fun with quizzes, video, contests, and games.  NurseConnect has over 14,000 nurses rating hospitals, reading articles and blogs, and learning about top-rated nursing programs to continue their education.  There’s even an article explaining how the hospital review program on NurseConnect has become a tremendous resource for travel nurses.

It is imperative for pharma marketers to engage these nurse communities, where the medications they administer are a big part of their conversations.  Here’s your nurse community checklist:

1. Nurses are a vital and accessible source of information for their patients.  Are you arming nurses with the tools and information to help them do their jobs?
2. Nurse communities are active.  Are you constantly supplying them with fresh and relevant information?
3. Nurses are proud to deliver the “human touch” that distinguishes them from doctors.  How human is your brand?
4. Nurse communities don’t just talk about nursing.  Does your drug have a story to tell?  Does your brand go beyond treating disease?  Inspire them.  Make them laugh.  Give them something to talk about.

What are your current social network practices, and how can you use these practices to reach nurse communities?

By Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

Want to communicate more effectively and quickly with health care providers? Then read a few comic books.

Probably not the advice you were expecting to hear, right? After all, comics are for kids and nerds, adolescent flights of fancy that we put away when we move on to more serious things. And there’s nothing more serious than the life and death stakes of the Pharmaceutical industry right?

Then why is respected Pharma professional like Fard Johnmar using the comic book format to communicate information about social media with his Path of the Blue Eye project? Isn’t he afraid that he won’t be taken seriously? Isn’t he afraid that people will look at the medium he’s using and dismiss his ideas out of hand?

Probably not. Because Fard is a terrifically smart guy who has read a plethora of volumes about how to communicate information in the most impactful manner. Books like Scott McCloud’s seminal UNDERSTANDING COMICS, a volume that is on almost every User Experience Designer’s reading list. In that classic work, McCloud broke down how comics or if you prefer the marriage of text and visual (like the web) provide the most effective means of communication because they appeal to multiple senses. This idea is called synaesthetics and if you have the time, it’s a field worthy of exploration by any communications professional.

As McCloud and others have rightly noted, the first words were actually pictures (think Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese pictographs). And if, as we’ve argued before, our brains our hardwired to process data through storytelling, then visual representation provides the quickest, most perceptually friendly way to tell a story.

What’s all this have to do with Pharma, you’re asking yourself? Plenty.

Two of the biggest issues facing our industry are HCP education and patient education and compliance. The major obstacle to the first is lack of time (like those precious seven minutes your sales rep gets with a physician). The major obstacle to the second is arguably education and comprehension levels. Data visualization tackles both these issues.

Take a look at the visual below:

If you were a beleaguered sales rep, trying to make the most of his limited time with an HCP, would you rather spend five minutes explaining the positioning of your new anti-psychotic treatment or showing them a version of this diagram with your drug highlighted in bold text? I think we all know which options would lead to a more successful outcome.

The second challenge can also be addressed by data visualization and offers an even more positive outlook. Yes, we can break down complex pandemics and explain them easily through infographics. But we can also use the same principals to improve patient care and compliance. Check out the chart below.

This is a representation of a pilot project by New York City’s public hospitals to standardize color-coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions. Ultimately, this could lead to a standard visual language for the healthcare community where we evolve a common iconography for patient conditions and drug risks that is as well known as stop signs or bathroom iconography. Think what that could do for information communication and compliance.

Why are we talking about this on a blog that’s dedicated to digital innovations in Pharma? Because the language of the web is visual. And the more quickly we can convey information to users, the better the user experience. And the better the user experience, the more time spent on a site or with an application (and by extension the greater uptake of the information we’re trying to communicate).

Take a look at the current site for your product. Is it quickly and easily comprehensible by a harried doctor or a patient from an uncommon economic or cultural background? Or is it a text dense site that’s written for a college level reading ability? Maybe it’s time to take a lesson from those comics I mentioned at the start of the article and find a different way to get your point across.

How can you change your digital offerings to more clearly communicate your message?