Reading this article and discussion on treating eczema got me thinking (http://ow.ly/7SPaW ) about the need for more effective treatment. There seems to be a massive gap for a properly resourced digital platform for people with dermatology problems. I am myself an ‘atopic triad’ (sounds cool, but just means I’m delicate) and have found GPs to be a little uninterested in skin problems, and dermatologists to be pretty underwhelming in their ability to prescribe a solution. And even much less motivated to tackle the cause. There probably are some really good ones, but looking at various online discussions it appears that they are in the minority.

There are a number of products on the market, some easily accessible like Johnson & Johnson’s ‘Head-To-Toe’ or ‘Baby Aqueous’, and Boot’s ‘E45′ whilst others may be much less available due either it having limited adoption within the NHS and not being favoured by key dermatologists. They may also have achieved limited distribution as an OTC product -for whatever reason. ‘Hydromol Cream’ produced by Alliance Pharmaceuticals might well be the right skin cream for me but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never seen it for sale, and consequently have never tried it!

In the same way that allergens should be systematically removed from the list of possible causes for the individual, so too soaps that could be aggravating problems along with others that could help alleviate them. One product simply isn’t the right product for someone else.

Some pharma companies have tested the online GP with some success such as Pfizer and their ‘MANMOT’, and I suspect that model can be expanded further. It really seems to me that there is desperate need for a consolidated digital platform that is in part run or contributed to by physicians with an interest in dermatology (perhaps even enlightened dermatologists though I understand that you guys are a ‘conservative’ bunch) that can provide ongoing advice. Perhaps products could also be provided through the site based on the individuals profile and need.

Aggregating the patient user results through crowdsourcing might actually lead to some genuine understanding of causes and short cut the process to helping to eliminate or control it for future patients –who knows?

If you want to learn about the digital pharmaceutical marketing services we offer, visit our pharmaceutical marketing page or call us on 0844 450 5545.

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The inspiration for this post came when someone alerted me (and the rest of their Twitter followers) to Google’s NGRAM service. This allows the user to see on a graph the incidence of specific words and phrases that have been included in books over time since around 1600!

After a few minutes of messing around with various keywords, I reverted to a little obsession that I have with a very modern problem; obesity. The ‘obesity’ keyword in turn was probably triggered by the recent news that the UK is now the proud home to the largest men and women in Europe.

Using the tool, I found that over the last twenty years or so the incidence of the words ‘obesity’ and ‘malnutrition’ (although extraordinarily not mutually incompatible) in books published have diverged. You can see the graph below.

As society has stopped worrying about food availability due to improvements in distribution, longevity and of course the ability to pay for it, we seem to have gotten a little carried away and forgotten to stop eating.  Obviously the reasons are complicated and numerous, ranging from basic accessibility, laziness, evil trans fats through to psychological issues. But, whatever the reasons, the results are pretty sad with ramifications to society as a whole and our over-stretched health systems.

So, what’s this got to do with digital? Well there are loads of connections between obesity and subsequent health complications and the possibilities for digital platforms to help improve our health, through understanding and action, will without doubt become more and more important.

Colorectal cancer is just one of the diseases which has strong links with over-eating, so we’ve produced a nice little infographic that includes some key facts (taken from sources found in Google, obviously) about it – see below.  The key take-away is that everyone can take measures to reduce the potential of suffering from it through exercise and healthy eating.  But then all health advice does come back to eating sensibly and exercising, doesn’t it?

This often repeated advice, however, doesn’t seem to be getting through though.  Infographics, least of all ones released via our blog aren’t going to change opinions, but wide-ranging effective communication does need to be developed.  Perhaps, instead, there needs to be some sort of incentive for people who don’t seem to understand, or even be able to connect fast-foods and unhealthy eating with the effects on their bodies?

Perhaps governments, or other private initiatives could ‘gamify’ the process?  We could be rewarded for eating healthily somehow in return for food, gas, electricity, or other essentials?  A little short term gain is needed in order to bring about long term change for us whilst we are still dominated by our lizard brains that can’t resist short term reward.  Perhaps all food retailers should be co-opted into issuing a modern version of green stamps that ‘players’ can redeem for other essentials when selecting the ‘right’ purchases.

We should all be encouraged to grow fruit and vegetables and become more self-sufficient anyway.  I think I’m right in saying that houses built in Victorian England included a fruit tree in the garden to help encourage healthy eating (and freely available).  In these austere times it probably not a bad idea to become a little more self-sufficient, but add some competition to it to encourage greater volumes of natural produce being grown, consumed or even traded along with exercise sessions completed.

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think of the possibilities...

You may, just may, have heard about Google’s latest foray into social networking with ‘Google +’ and if so, like most people, you probably want to know why you need to know about it. Rather than write a blog post about it, I’ve found a nice little blog post for you that basically reassures you that you don’t need to worry about it. It’s for geeks like us working online – for now….

In a nutshell it is a way to filter the noise from all the people you will already be following, listening to, or connected to in some way. If you’re on LinkedIn, have RSS, email alerts, or are more connected via Twitter, Facebook and a plethora of other networks you may see the sense in organising your feeds into friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues, industry peers, similar interests, etc.

I can certainly see the benefits of organising people into distinct groups that allow us greater control over what we listen to and who we communicate with.

It has 10M+ users already and is expected to hit 20M by the weekend, and i thought that it was a limited, soft launch….

Scobleizer

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Both definitely want ‘in on’ the others ‘domain’. Facebook want to integrate web searching and buying, and Google wants to integrate our social lives into the SERPs. If either succeed they will make a serious dent into the others market. Google will increasingly use social criteria to enhance the relevance of the results and therefore increase their significance for advertises. If Facebook on the other hand, can integrate searching and buying activity within their community to effectively harness e-commerce across communities they will act as a huge super-affiliate; a ramped up Groupon, and then some.

I love Google for making my life easier by organising and filtering the web, but then I also love ‘social media’ –the term generally defined to mean social interaction on the web. Both could and will get ‘better’ by increasing the ease and relevance with which they provide their services to me, but I cannot accept that Facebook, or any other social or community platform will make Google superfluous.

I’ve read numerous comment declaring how Facebook is highly relevant and how Google just isn’t as relevant for brands/business/advertisers as it was because of social platforms. They point to how Facebook is capturing more and more advertising budget because of their demographic targeting used in conjunction with the community effect. I agree, a well executed campaign can be enormously successful, but to make Google irrelevant, really?

But it is not the norm for successful business to be able to execute successfully in Facebook, and certainly not without considerable effort, whereas advertising in Google is (or certainly should be if the website is designed and built to convert users into sales) simple. Google’s advertising auction concept was revolutionary, Facebook is merely word of mouth on speed.

My comparison is a little unfair I grant you, but the point is that whereas an advertiser can use Google to convert users and drive sales, they must use Facebook for branding and awareness, to deliver trust first and foremost. Sales come as a result of that, and other activity.

Until Facebook can deliver sales (or conversions) for business on huge scale it cannot be considered as an advertising alternative to Google. It should be considered as complementary, but that is no bad thing for advertisers. A campaign that blends social and search into an integrated campaign that aggressively targets users where they are whilst being transparent, open and valuable is how a business should market themselves. Right now where better to start than Google and Facebook?

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Wikileaks is a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks from official sources that typically come from governments, religious groups, corporate or other influential and powerful organisations.  It’s online, so there’s no limit to the audience that it can generate, and the source of the leaks it can attract.  It attempts to preserve the anonymity of the contributor, but checks the validity of the source before publishing. Where better to start with its modus operandi of the organisation than from the ‘main man’ himself;

” The first ingredient of civil society is the people’s right to know, because without such understanding no human being can meaningfully choose to support anything. Knowledge is the driver of every political process, every constitution, every law and every regulation. The communication of knowledge is without salient analogue. It is living, unique and demands its rightful place at the summit of society.” (http://bit.ly/iiBzu5)

He goes on to say, that if governments don’t wish to be associated with leaks that implicate them they could choose not to engage in the dirty tricks they don’t want anyone to find out about.  Such actions are not about ‘realpolitik’ or necessity but all about vested interest and power-mongering (really? Who knew, huh?). Surely then it would just be simpler not to engage in material that produces communications records for Wikileaks to leak, maybe?

It’s never simple though is it, and it frustrated me that a question posed by a British diplomat to Julian Assange in a Q&A with him on the Guardian that was not answered properly, in fact at all. There is certainly a point for allowing governments to do what they need to do discreetly for the benefit of people, countries etc. in the short term, as there is a need for secrecy in other realms to avoid physical danger to people working in dangerous situations.  To lie is to be human after all. If we didn’t lie we would all spend our days insulting and disappointing people and probably losing friends. The trouble is, that most diplomacy doesn’t tend to be for the benefit of those the information is being held from, or am I being too cynical?

A quick run down of interesting Wikileak facts*

- It’s like Wikipedia but focused on leaked documentation that helps to deliver the truth

- A ‘wiki’ is a piece of software that enables collaboration

- As it is a wiki it will not cease to operate if Julian Assange ‘has an accident’ or is imprisoned. Leaks will continue to be, well, leaked.

- Right-wing reaction in the U.S. (in particular) that include death threats should be condemned with enthusiasm equal to those individuals irresponsibly ‘flapping their gums’

- If Julian Assange is guilty of cromes (personally committed) then he should face the law in the same manner as anyone else. I currently doubt that these crimes include anything connected with his work in Wikileaks

- Wikileaks was not receiving bad publicity until the recent leaks that directly affected the U.S. This is interesting, but I’ll say no more

- If someone had come to physical harm as a direct result of Wikileaks, the U.S. government would surely have told the world wouldn’t they?

It’s not all about irresponsible behaviour…

1. Time Magazine said, Wikileaks “Could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”

2. Wikileaks won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award & the 2009 Amnesty International Human Rights Reporting Award (New Media)

And now for something a little lighter…

1. I can’t remember who the Tweeter was that said it, but his comment was timely and spot on in diffusing reaction (whilst also raising a chuckle from me) when he said,

“Palin says Julian Assange should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden – so he should be safe for at least a decade #WikiLeaks“

2.  Another joke doing the rounds, “Freedom of Speech -priceless. For everything else, there’s MasterCard (and Visa and PayPal).” (in reference to the payment gateways that are now refusing to process payments to Wikileaks (because they have taken a stand. Oh, no, wait, apparently it was due to pressure…)

Can’t find Wikileaks, try this address http://213.251.145.96/

Right, I’m off to start up Wikileeks because I’m fond of the Welsh….

Check out our wikileaks bookmarks on Delicious

*- and thoughts, and a little bit of opinion…

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• The newspaper was one of the first truly mass medias that everyone enjoyed
• They haven’t translated their business model to online successfully, in fact at all
• Newspapers are losing advertising revenue and circulation all the time
• They are in terminal decline

So will the iPad with its inviting tactile interface save the newspaper businesses? To be honest, single-handedly, blatantly not. With others of its ilk such as the Galaxy Tab and others? Still, absolutely not. Even when penetration of tablets hits the kind of figures necessary to support newspaper businesses I still have my doubts.

The problem is that we have come to expect news for free, and what’s more we contribute to it now so emphasis on what news we want to consume has changed. I have a couple of apps on my iPad that allows me to view RSS of both ‘semi-professional’ and non-professional ‘news’ content. ‘Pulse’ is my favourite. It looks slick, and practically begs me to click into the stories or content that it pulls in. This very ‘Appley’ way of reading is somehow even more appealing to me than just plain old reading. I also forget that the news hasn’t necessarily been checked and verified by a paid professional.

If Pulse or other readers were to help the newspaper industry they would have to pull in content for which they would be charged directly or have a watertight revenue model that would allow revenue share and convince their newspaper partners. So far the FT, The Times, The NYT (“All the news worth printing”) among others have developed apps but been cagey about revenues. I’m not surprised at all. Even if all the 8 million (?) iPad owners invested in paid for content via apps provided by the traditional news papers, the figures probably wouldn’t be very interesting to their respective business (though obviously they would statistically impressive). The point is at the moment though that the revenues won’t be very interesting (though the best bets here are business news and local news) at this point because they haven’t cracked the new format. It’s not just about text.

If tablets -and the next ‘innovation’, electronic papers anyone?-did herald a rush of people willing to pay a weekly or monthly subscription to their preferred newspaper provider, the costs of newspaper production are still not going to come down appreciably –apart from in the volume of paper that they have to order in to print on. No, their print production overheads will still be huge, and whichever way you look at it the newspaper in its current form will still cease to exist within 10 years. If they are to survive as businesses then they must be able to take advantage of electronic or digital media somehow in order to pay for the journalists who continue to provide on-the-whole tremendous editorial, news and comment (Daily Mail an exception here, ugh hum).

The question is then still, how? Through a daily subscription model, weekly, monthly, yearly? Doubtful, but it could play its part. What about an advertising revenue in the tried, tested and failed CPM model of the PC internet? Perhaps as a part, again, and the indications are that CTR on iPad’s are high (but I’m sure just part of the ‘newness’ effect) but it won’t keep the lights on alone. It’s probably going to be a combination of these and something not realised yet. I can appreciate why the ad revenue model has been rejected by those that have developed apps as it has failed in the PC model, which would make anyone reluctant, and rightly so. It’s a new format.

So what else then? Slicing and dicing content types and distributing to the relevant feeders perhaps, by developing content resources that can be mined, and researched, news archive search engines, or by virtue of super-slick micro payments for articles (who wouldn’t mind paying 2p for something that’s really interesting?) and certainly by leveraging location based advertising. Wrapping this into the delicious format of the iPad and utilising its many functions into producing a really engaging interactive, multi-media and co-operative method of news consumption and creation will be the way forward. In that sense it will save professional journalism, certainly, but not ‘newspapers’!

I’ll come back to some more specific ideas in my next posts… but I’d be interested if anyone has any already?…. The original article on Mashable….We’ve have an earlier blog post on this subject but this came to the opposite conclusion.

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You can see the original post here at ‘information is beautiful‘.

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It’s more quaint than business opportunity at the moment as it’s a real world extension of the basic Wikipedia concept; contributing to more freely accessible information for everyone who is interested, and for, well, in this case potentially pretty much everything. But it has a more social aspect to it. At the very least I can certainly see a social games emerging from these concepts- think treasure hunt with Foursquare (location based) and Twitter (real time) maybe?

Perhaps tags should include 3-D barcodes, NFC (like Oyster) tags and in the future DNA style tagging? Part of me wants to run away at the big brother potential of all this social technology and part of my revels in it. The Itzen concept is certainly very interesting but early days, so I’m looking forward to seeing if people adopt it.

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I’ll run through the percentages with a little commentary. If you’re not interested in being teased with a ‘slow reveal’ though just click down to the bottom of the posting for a table of the results.

100% did you enjoy Eyeforpharma (#efp) 2010!

That’s excellent news so well done to Jon Gwillim for organising such as resoundingly successful event, and to everyone else for contributing to discussion. No debate on that one then.

53% did learn about new marketing channels previously not considered

This was not an area for prevarication as the remaining 47% felt that there was nothing new on show. I’m not sure whether the lack of European case studies on show was to blame but I felt that there was a change, but maybe not in the content.

86% would consider new ways to engage with healthcare professionals and patients

That is a whopping 86% of you from where I am sitting! Okay, you’ve only committed to ‘considering’ new ways but that’s considerably better than dismissing innovative digital media (smart move ). The question did lump healthcare professionals with patients, but both have their complications. Where respective country code impedes outright patient communications (rightly so), perceptions of doctors entrenched in traditional communication channels is equally challenging to the mind of the marketer.

33% had fears of using social media channels as a means for engagement eased

27% are undecided and 40% felt that it did not help instil confidence. This is where we get to the nub of the problem. Without great European case studies there will be less confidence in executing campaigns which are not typical one way communication strategies. If there isn’t a medical legal precedent in Europe let alone the operating country relevant to the marketer it makes the process of setting up a project a much harder one.

Great case studies are coming though, though small at the moment, confidence is growing in how to use social platforms within regulations and effectively. There is a mass of research and data coming through that demonstrate relevance and the value to the pharma industry.

73% of you will be attending further digital marketing events as a result of this one!!

I don’t know whether that is truly 73% who will be attending as a result of this one, or whether that most were intending to go anyway. Still, if we take the result literally I suggest to me that Eyeforpharma sparked a surge of interest in digital marketing for pharmaceutical marketing professionals which is great news. It certainly corroborates the research that suggests that increasing amounts of spending will be committed to it over the coming year to 18 months.

So, how will the industry embrace the social web? How will patients and HCPs perceive their involvement? As an intrusion or as a welcome participant? Like any social media project implemented by a business it will depend on the people in question, the objectives of the marketing campaign, the strategy and the how the tactics are executed. It will require understanding and commitment from marketing and comm’s departments who will see much of the new activity –such as moderation- as extra work that they don’t have resource for. It’s an interesting area for discussion and I’ll be returning to it in my next post.

Graph displaying responses to 5 Questions posed to marketers at Eyeforpharma

The table of results including full ‘questions’; follow up to Eyeforpharma

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I was impressed with the standard of the speeches, but overall I don’t think that the content was a massive departure from the previous year. The tone and enthusiasm from the speakers and those in the audience however, was different. What was interesting for me was that although this was about digital marketing everything seemed to come back to social media, or web2.0 (they’re catch-all phrases really). However, some of the more easily achieved digital marketing tactics are still not really embraced by pharma. It almost feels like a case of trying to run before you being able to walk.

To market around the ‘code’ restrictions using search engine marketing is much, much easier than using social media. Jonathan Richman recently made the case for email marketing in his excellent ‘Dose of Digital’, but I think ‘search’, both natural and paid, in the UK is even better. Build it and they will not come, but sign-post it to them in search engines and they will. The result? Bucket loads of relevant traffic. The hard part is in then providing quality content and engagement, but that’s a whole other issue (and a bit social).

I’m not knocking enthusiasm for social media. Not a bit of it, I love its potential for changing the landscape for communications, but specifically for HCP comm’s and ultimately patient care. It’s a shift for one to one communications, so it’s really important that people understand it and embrace it.

So, what I’d like to know from anyone at the #efp conference is, did the talks or any of the resulting discussion change anyone’s perception of social media in healthcare?

1. Did you enjoy eye for pharma (#efp) this year?

	Yes
	No
	Undecided

2. Did you learn about any marketing channels or tactics for engagement that you had not previously considered?

	Yes
	No
	Undecided

3. Has the conference eased any fears that you have about social media in this industry?

	Yes
	No
	Undecided

4. Would you now consider new ways to ‘engage’ with patients and healthcare professionals?

	Yes
	No
	Undecided

5. Will you be attending more digital pharma marketing events as a result of this one?

	Yes
	No
	Undecided

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