The Scoop

If you want to start becoming more social in Pharma try starting with social listening. It’s a worthwhile technique and ensures that when you do to tweet you’ll be fully informed, target the right conversations, know who to engage with and have an in-depth knowledge of the latest topics.

To understand why parents balk at routine vaccinations for their kids, London-based drug giant GlaxoSmithKline undertook a project to mine parent websites with text analytics software from an MIT spinoff. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the project has led the drugmaker to reconsider how it helps physicians communicate with parents about inoculating their children.

Along with social media has come a blurring of the line between what is public information and what should be kept private. We in the healthcare community must be especially cognizant of the potential risks. HIMSS has recently released a white paper, “Social Media in Healthcare: Privacy and Security Considerations.” It includes some of legal and ethical implications, technological threats and risk mitigation strategies with using social media to interact with patients.

The bottom line is that reviews are here to stay. Actively monitoring and responding to them are must-do strategies for protecting your brand.

For example, James Pennebaker — a University of Texas-Austin psychologist and researcher — has found that people writing about emotional upheavals often experience better health, including a stronger immune system.

I love social media so much that I give seminars on how academics should use it to advance their careers and fields of study.  Today I’m writing about what I hate about it to answer a question often posed to me by social media skeptics: what are the downsides to participating in social media?

Of course, virtual visits can’t do everything that a doctor can do in-person. But in the average primary care checkup, a patient sees a doctor for about 7 minutes. In that context, it’s not hard to see the advantage of cutting out the extra time and making the most of a short visit.

Whether a practice is launching a website or rebuilding one, thanks to a changing health care landscape of the Affordable Care Act, the websites physicians need by 2014 will look much different from the ones online today.

#PHOAM is the concept, #PHOAMed is the hashtag

Whenever you publish or discover and share any pharma-produced medical educational material, add the #PHOAMed hashtag to your post.

So, why are physicians and other healthcare providers so reluctant to embrace Twitter?

I think that there are several reasons and many valid concerns.  Here are some of the most common: (The Top Three Questions I get when discussing social media with physicians)

According to the most recent industry data available, doctors are beginning to encourage patients to use mobile health apps in numbers that would have been unimaginable just a short time ago.

Patients now get a business card with the access site to a patient portal, my Twitter handle and my blog site. They can contact me 24/7, understanding that I’ll answer with the same availability as my email.

Pharma is awakening to the "New Normal" in customer engagement. And that's good news for all you digital marketers. Last week I spoke to Craig Robertson, who is spearheading a new report from Accenture Life Sciences about the pharmaceutical industry’s accelerating adoption of digital and social marketing to reach patients and providers.

In less than two years the group has gained so much momentum that it has branched into other media. Dan Munro discussed the #bcsm phenomenon in Forbes.com in March. “What #BCSM does exemplify…is how to be open, direct and cut through the layers of healthcare bureaucracies we’ve spent decades building,” he wrote.

You should really take a look at the full case study (which is a model of clarity), but in short, it is the story of how the St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust in London began monitoring one of their kidney patients’  Twitter feeds

A physician mentor of mine suggested that I start a Twitter account and take advantage of the vast amount of knowledge floating around in Twitter world. I was hesitant at first since my free time is limited and I didn’t really need any additional distractions from my fellowship.

For the first time, the government will make information about financial relationships between doctors, teaching hospitals and drug manufacturers publicly available.

Have you ever Googled a medical symptom? Posted in an online forum before visiting your general practitioner? Used social media to voice an opinion about a healthcare provider or speak about your personal experiences? For many people, turning to the Internet (especially social media) has become a natural way to seek quick answers and discuss medical matters, and the increasing reliance on “Dr. Google” has altered the way that people engage with clinicians.

"Surprisingly, physicians ages 45-59 are the most likely to use any social network for professional purposes overall."

I reject the view that the internet and social media are somehow degrading the culture of medicine, or causing it to change for the worse. Instead, I see emerging modalities as offering the profession an urgently needed chance to radically update its approach, and interact with patients, data, and each other in important new ways.