Ryan Slipakoff of PharmaConnect at Digital Pharma East 2011. Here he speaks with host Alice An on doctor-centric technology.

by Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in how to tell a story…

1. Should we do it in a text narrative?
2. Would it work well as a bulleted PowerPoint presentation?
3. Could we use kinetic typography to make a great short video?
4. What kind of backing track would create the right mood?
5. Would this work as a comic-book style graphic novel?

…that we forget about who is involved.

We forget about the importance of telling a story as a person, and to a person. The real meaning of storytelling lies in that exchange. Storytelling without your audience isn’t storytelling, it’s talking to yourself. And speaking to an audience without a storyteller’s unique voice isn’t storytelling… it’s presenting an anonymous report.

Storytelling needs to involve personality to work, both yours and theirs. But when they’re both there, that’s when it does work. That’s when the real magic of the story happens.

And that’s why it can make such a difference in health care.

California physician blogger Dr. Jan Gurley points out that her patients (and all of us) know most of what we need to be doing to take care of ourselves. We aren’t less-than-healthy because we don’t realize that junk food and lethargy aren’t the best ways to take care of ourselves, or that the directions on our prescription should be followed. We don’t take good care of ourselves not because of ignorance, but because we haven’t been emotionally involved in the story of why we should.

She offers ten tips on how to tell a physician can connect with a patient by telling a story that will matter to them. Tell a story of an individual, make it detailed, give it a narrative arc and a climax…

My question is, are we doing the same in our digital offerings to those same patients?

All too often, we present facts, frequently because we are prohibited by regulation from drawing conclusions for patients. We are not always allowed to tell specific patient stories. From product labeling to HIPAA laws, there are a host of reasons why stories aren’t always easy to tell.

But as effective as they are, as helpful as they can be, as deeply as they can affect patients – shouldn’t we still try?

by DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

It’s been several years now since the pharmaceutical industry first began to try to figure out social media – what it was, how to use it to find customers, how to give customers information, and how to learn more about them through it. It hasn’t been always successful, those several years, but the process has been going on nonetheless. Maybe it’s improving, or maybe not – but the struggle has become part of life for the industry.

Now, however, it’s moving elsewhere in the healthcare arena – to individual healthcare professionals (HCPs). Your own doctors and nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants – they’re the ones just starting to see the impact that social media can have on their profession, for good and for ill.

Recently, James Ellis riffed on how Facebook and SEO are cracking the formerly impervious facade in the image of your HCP. Social media does, undoubtedly, personalize everything. No longer are experts of any kind able to decree without question. No longer is “a customer base” a vast, collective singular. Customers are individual people – and so are the experts. So how will HCPs handle social media?

On the one hand, it’s an opportunity for a person with even the smallest practice to become a pundit. Blogging, tweeting, podcasting and posting can make a minor celebrity out of a HCP. When you Google a new HCP, wouldn’t you be impressed if they had a wide swath of results showing their thought leadership in their field, proving that they kept up with the latest news and cared enough to write and consider it outside of their everyday practice? Kevin Pho, the New Hampshire GP who is the most famous HCP in social media, suggests that all HCPs either have, or be part of, a social media presence. He points out its utility as a marketing tool – and in a practice where managed care profit margins grow ever smaller, free marketing is a valuable commodity.

However, as celebrities, professional athletes, writers, job-seekers and plenty of average people have discovered, the ease with which social-media sharing can happen can lull users into not thinking critically before posting. When you have people who are trusting their health and that of their loved ones to you, what you think of as noncontroversial can be problematic. Would you want to know that your surgeon had spent the weekend partying before your Monday-morning operation? Are you going to be impressed to hear that members of the office staff are feuding?

Boundaries must be considered, set up and maintained to make sure that a healthy social-media presence does not overwhelm a HCP, that it does not set unrealistic expectations of availability in patients’ minds, and that it puts the practice in a favorable and accurate light.

This post is part of a series of point/counterpoint arguments proposed by different members of the Pixels & Pills staff. We’re strong believers that healthy arguments can yield the best solutions, and we hope that you enjoy our series. Feel free to add your own arguments in the comments section below!

By Russ Ward (@russcward)

This is going to be a shocking statement for me to put on a blog that has, for the last year and a half, crusaded tirelessly and award-winningly-effectively (whatever, they added “lol” to the Oxford English Dictionary) to help the pharma industry understand the importance of considering social media in its interactions with physicians, patients, the public, and each other.

But here goes:

Social media still isn’t better than face-to-face.

We are all animals, human animals. We require each other’s presence to be healthy, to be alive. To really communicate, we need to see each other, touch a hand, watch an expression, hear a voice, exchange glances. Our technological advances in the last decade have leapfrogged past that, but all of the Tweeted emoticons, all of the Skype screens, all of the Facebook pictures in the world still can’t take the place of those basic needs.

Proponents say that it’s quicker, it’s easier, that social media makes you more productive because you can multitask politely. Well, yes. But giving you the technical ability still doesn’t give you the mental capability. Psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell, MD calls multitasking a “mythical activity”: It’s unquestionably attempted all the time – but is it ever really achieved?

You find me a person who wouldn’t feel as if they were paid more attention to after a face-to-face conversation with no other distractions, rather than after a Tweet conversation held in the midst of a meeting or a conference call, or while driving or grocery shopping. And find the person who would feel better about your relationship when you explained that you wanted to make your interactions quicker and easier, rather than more focused or meaningful.

The beauty of social media, proponents say, is that it can help you stay more connected to your current network and improve your connection to your extended network. I’d agree with that (see, I do belong on this blog!) but I’d argue that that statement implies that it’s additive, not a substitution. That works if you’re using social media along with all the face-to-face interaction you had before – not if you swap out face-to-face interactions entirely and try to just use social media to keep those relationships going.

I’m not a Luddite, obviously, and I don’t think we should shy away from innovation because it’s not What We Were Used To. But just because convenient alternatives exist doesn’t mean that they’re meant to replace the originals. We still teach our kids how to tie their sneakers even though they have ones with Velcro straps. We still bake them cookies even though we can also buy slice-and-bake freezer dough. And we still get something out of naturally looking someone in the eye and getting to know them in three-dimensional, tactile, physical space, that we can’t quite get any other way.

Social media has huge potential advantages for business, but the root of business is still personal interactions, and we can’t forget that.

Dan Diamond, MD FAAFP, President of Powedyme, teaches Pharma marketers the hows and whens of reaching out to physicians and supplying them with vital information right when they need it

Elissa Guerra, Senior Director of Sales at The Hibbert Group, tells P&P what she learned from the physician panel and the unique waiter-diner relationship between agencies and their clients.

Richard Beck, Product Manager of Aptilon, demonstrates how physicians and Pharma reps can stay in touch instantly via their smartphones, and discusses their go-to-market strategy

By Dan Bobear (@dbobear)

Now that AstraZeneca’s experimental blood thinner Brilinta has been given the green light by an advisory committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they need to prepare for the next hurdle they face: usurping category leader, Plavix, which is slated for generic availability sometime next year.

Most critical: changing physician prescribing behavior.

The lessons coming out of the Brilinta approval process are a key for marketers. Like the study that showed Brilinta’s less favorable results in the U.S., compared to the entire 18,000+ international population of patients studied, what works in one place may not work in another.

What should AstraZeneca (and every marketer) be thinking about?

Location-based promotional activity – You can have the right message but in the wrong place. With the effectiveness in U.S. participants in question, the company needs to address that concern, giving patients and physicians confidence in the drug as an appropriate course of treatment. Traditional marketing vehicles, social media, conference exhibits and direct mail pieces combined with insight gathered through the CRM system will ensure the right message is delivered to the right audience at the right time.

Creating a positive brand image – This article references a poll that showed that 75 percent of physicians were prescribing Plavix for a year or more. For Brilinta to successfully penetrate the market, they will likely need to break physician behavior of prescribing a medication out of habit. Reaching an increasing number of doctors with no-call policies, as well as a consumer audience, will require a multi-channel approach, especially when a low-cost generic option is available. Where to focus?  For doctors, the brand needs to communicate the safety and efficacy of the drug. Patients also need to understand the advantages they will gain through treatment.

Interacting directly with patients – Patients who request a drug, provided they are a candidate for it, are likely to get it. Direct-to-consumer messaging is no longer limited to print and broadcast advertising and educational resources. Today’s patients head online and research treatment options across a variety of sources. Community forums enable patients to get information from other users, medical professionals, and company-sponsored materials. While changing physician prescribing behavior is an imperative, it’s also important to create demand among appropriate patients.

Incorporating social media – Discussion groups, You Tube videos, Twitter, and blogs as well as improved search engine optimization can increase brand awareness and create a positive connection with the target community. Facebook has become an extremely important referral source to drive people to a company’s website. There are brand pages, disease awareness groups and fans or followers that can carry the message to a larger audience. AstraZeneca has taken a deliberate but dedicated approach to social media, but to shift the opinion of doctors and patients, they will need to produce social content that is a little less sterile and a lot more engaging.

The September 16 decision looks favorable. How do you see this changing the competitive landscape? What do you think Brilinta needs to achieve peak sales?

In a recurring series, Patient 2.0 posts look at what goes on outside the marketing company and the exam room. Where are the other links in the healthcare chain and how can digital technology help them?

By Sven Larsen (@zemoga)

We’ve talked about the pharmacy, the outpatient center, even the medicine cabinet, in terms of where the patient has healthcare experiences. What about the acute setting – when the patient is admitted into the hospital itself?

As former med students ourselves and having had numerous conversations with physicians some issues are glaringly obvious. and The biggest problem we see, which could be fixed completely using technology, is a simple one: sleep.

Residents are routinely pressed into 30-hour shifts in hospitals, yet truck drivers aren’t allowed more than 11-hour shifts and pilots aren’t allowed more than 8. Why? Is it somehow worse to think about people dying or being injured by accidents on the road or in the air than from a misdiagnosis or an accidental overdose? It doesn’t make any sense to have patients’ lives in the hands of student doctors – hands that are not only untried, but beyond exhausted. Hazing isn’t allowed in frats anymore, so why is it still allowed in med school? This is madness. It isn’t about tradition. It’s about championing the patient’s health and safety. It literally is a matter of life and death.

This is a field exquisitely attuned to data, always striving to better patient outcomes. The idea of residents (or their patients) benefiting from working nonstop from daybreak Monday to lunch on Tuesday – surely that belongs in the days of leeches and bloodletting, of using whiskey and a stick as anaesthesia.

Hospital staffing and demand can be tracked and predicted with the precision with which it such forecasting is done in any other large facility. Processes and paperwork can be automated and digitized, minimizing the need for paperwork and maximizing the time spent learning and treating patients.

Technology can keep doctors in training healthier, and keep patients in less danger – and we should be working on that. Not only does it keep our patients safe, but it champions the well-being of our future physician customers. They need to get through their training safely and effectively, and we can help.

Live From the E-Pharma Summit (#epharma)

Dave deBronkart, Co-Chairman of the Society of Participatory Medicine provides some unique insight in to the patient’s approach to digital media and healthcare.