Archive for December, 2008

  |  
31 December 2008

Digital marketing push for pharma in 2009

From iMedia:

“The pharmaceutical industry is preparing to make a big push in the digital marketing space in 2009, according to a new survey from MarketBridge. Although the industry is largely behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing, nearly 45 percent of pharmaceutical executives made it clear that they need to better understand the opportunity, and more than a third said they’re not adequately organized to take advantage, ClickZ reports.

“Half of all those who responded to the ‘Digital Marketing in Pharma’ survey said less than 10 percent of their company’s marketing budget is allocated to digital. Moreover, there’s still a great deal of uncertainty among pharmaceutical companies about whether they can prove a substantial return on investment if they put more efforts into digital marketing.

“At least 72 percent of all respondents said they would be investing more in 2009, although that may be tempered somewhat by the recession. Partha Krishnamurthy, director of the University of Houston’s Institute for Health Care Marketing, suggests that large pharmaceutical companies face significant risk if they embrace Web 2.0. By its very nature, digital marketing will give consumers a louder voice in shaping a brand’s message, and those with the most negative experiences can easily rise to the top.”

Posted in Advertising, Business/corporate, e-health, e-marketing, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Social media | 1 Comment »

Tags: , , ,
30 December 2008

Social network for health

Here’s a great example of social media used by the healthcare industry, from MediaPost: Health insurance company Humana has developed some social media tools, including a Facebook application, to help customers keep their New Year fitness resolutions.

“One game, the ‘Freewheelin’ Cycle Challenge,’ is inspired by the company’s bike-sharing program. In the online game, users race against virtual opponents–such as a cheerleader or Marine drill sergeant–in a bicycle race. Energy and speed are gained by capturing nutritious snacks while running over junk food.

“The game is available at www.humanagames.com, a Web site set up in May by the health insurance company as a way to explore how to use games and technology to further messages of health. The game is being promoted through information and blogs on popular casual gaming sites, and can be emailed for maximum viral effect….

“The other application, available via Facebook, is called ‘The Battle of the Bulge.’ Through the social networking site, users answer a few questions and are assigned a virtual waistline. Through the Facebook network, other users can ‘fling fat’ at you, which would expand your waistline and lead to a possible online heart attack. Answering health-related questions correctly can shrink the size of the virtual waistline and enable you to throw fat at your friends.”

A Humana spokesperson said the application leveraged the competitive aspect of Facebook.

Posted in Business/corporate, Content, e-health, e-marketing, Healthcare, Social media | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
30 December 2008

Conference booth = advertising?

From BNET’s 10 weirdest drug stories of the month comes the following, originally reported by the Science Insider blog:

“Most scientific meetings don’t need bouncers. But a Novartis stand at the annual gathering of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene had two guards—just to keep away U.S. residents.

“The reason? The booth has information about Coartem, an anti-malarial drug sold by the tens of millions of doses in the developing world. As long as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet given its green light to Coartem (a decision is due on 26 December) the stand would constitute an advertisement for an unapproved drug, says Novartis’s Hans Rietveld—and that’s illegal.

“Reactions among conventioneers ranged from puzzled and amused to annoyed. But not to worry: The drug was also discussed during several scientific sessions.”

Posted in Advertising, Business/corporate, Healthcare, Media/journalism, Pharmaceuticals | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , ,
24 December 2008

Pharma marketing in the toilet?

Pharma Marketing reports:

“Whenever I hear or read about pharmaceutical executives bragging about their product “pipelines” to Wall Street investors I think of the Alaska oil pipeline – a huge and imposing structure, carefully engineered to bring me a product I need and desire.

“I don’t think about bathroom drain pipes discharging waste that I want to get rid of. But that’s apparently how the editors of Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine see drug pipelines if the cover image of the latest, December 2008, issue is any guide.

“PE has chosen to represent a drug pipeline by the type of PVC drain pipes commonly seen under our bathroom sinks, complete with the U-shaped “sludge” trap and all.

“PE shows money flowing into its “pipeline” at one end and pills coming out the other.

“But we all know that with bathroom drains, it’s always garbage in, garbage out!

“Is there some kind of subliminal message that PE is sending here? ‘Money down the drain’ comes to mind!”

Posted in Advertising, Business/corporate, Healthcare, Media/journalism, Pharmaceuticals | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , ,
19 December 2008

I don’t need no steenkin’ map

This is off-topic, but as an expatriate American this struck a chord with me. Here’s hoping that Barack Obama initiates an education revolution in the US, similar to what Kevin Rudd has promised in Australia. A recent Gallup/Harris poll has said that 37% of Americans can’t find the US on a map! What’s worse is some of the quotes from typical Americans about the survey, as reported by the Huffington Post.  

“Stuart Weiss, senior sociology professor at Boston College, said although these findings may be surprising to some, they’re by no means atypical.

“‘The sentiment of many Americans is that there’s little intrinsic value in studying a map of a place you’re already at,’ noted Weiss. ‘It’d be like driving to Graceland and then asking for directions once you’ve arrived. Not much point.’

“Shirley Matheson, a part-time Arby’s employee residing in Dayton, Ohio, agreed with Weiss’s assessment. ‘I live in the U.S.A., so why would I need to know where America is? Or the United States for that matter?’

“Added Matheson: ‘As long as there’s still room on that map for all three of those countries, I’m sure everyone will keep getting along just fine.’”

Ooooh boy… but wait, there’s more:

“Of the respondents actually capable of pinpointing America on the map of America, their accuracy decreased considerably with each additional query about the country. Asked for the name of the U.S. capital, those polled placed Washington, D.C., fifth behind ‘Minneapolis-St. Paul,’ ‘Mount Rushmore,’ ‘America City,’ and ‘Whitewater.’

“Despite Americans’ seemingly underdeveloped sense of their own geography, history and domestic policy, they did score high points on the issue of patriotism, calling America ‘the greatest country in the world’ (47 percent), ‘the best state of all the Unites States’ (31 percent), and ‘a place to definitely explore when I finally get my passport’ (22 percent).”

No comment. No comment at all. No, really, I mean no comment at all…

Posted in Education, Media/journalism | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , ,
16 December 2008

EMR penetration not as good as it looks

Ken Terry writes on BNET Healthcare: “The latest news on electronic medical record (EMR) penetration in physician practices can be interpreted in two different ways, depending on whether you see the glass as half empty or half full. According to a 2008 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38.4 percent of doctors reported they were using full or partial EMR systems, and 20.4 percent said they were using minimally functional EMRs, including e-prescribing, the ability to order tests and view lab results, and electronic notes. In a 2006 CDC survey, the corresponding figures were 29.2 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively. Optimists might cite these figures as showing that physicians are really starting to embrace EMRs.

“But not so fast. When the CDC asked about EMR systems that conform to interoperability standards and are known as electronic health records (EHRs), just 17 percent of physicians reported having basic EHRs (which do all that basic EMRs do, and can also connect with other systems in a standardized way), up from 11.2 percent in 2006. Only 4 percent of respondents said they had fully functional EHRs, compared with 3.1 percent two years earlier.

“Here’s why the answers to the EHR questions are significant: According to the Department of Health and Human Services, to which CDC belongs, an EHR is considered interoperable if it is certified by the private, nonprofit Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). Vendors of most full-featured EHRs have had their products certified by CCHIT for competitive reasons. So physicians who report they have a “basic” EMR are probably using a low-cost or older, non-certified EMR that can’t exchange data with other systems. Even practices with “basic” EHRs may not have the tools they need to use their systems for quality improvement or care coordination.

“So if someone tells you that nearly 40 percent of doctors have EMRs, remember that only 4 percent have fully functional EHRs that can do all the good things that health reform advocates want them to do.”

Posted in e-health, Healthcare | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , , ,
11 December 2008

E-health waste a billion-dollar Australian industry

Released this week was a Booz and Co consultancy report commissioned by the Government’s health reform adviser, the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission, that has warned Australia was wasting money and falling behind in the digital health revolution.

The Australian called it “a new study [that] slammed scattergun spending of almost $1.3 billion on state-based e-health schemes.” It also reported on the same day that State health ministers have finally agreed on a national plan to share patients’ electronic records.

It reported, “they gave the tick to the strategy commissioned in April amid controversy over delays, cost blowouts and resignations in e-health projects and bodies across the country.

“Electronic records for patients are currently held separately, if at all, across GP surgeries, hospitals, government agencies and other health centres, allowing only patchy sharing of information.

“The gaps have resulted in duplicate consultations, tests and treatments and prescribing mistakes, with past studies calculating the net benefits of better electronic record-keeping at up to $8.7 billion over the first 10 years.

“The lack of common IT systems and fast broadband has also stalled moves towards more sophisticated innovations, such as remote robotic surgery and electronic monitoring of patients.”

Posted in Australia, e-health, Healthcare, Media/journalism | Leave a Comment »

Tags: ,
4 December 2008

Australian GP’s digital path

In the latest edition of Australian Doctor, Sydney GP Raymond Seidler writes about his quest for a paperless practice, saying it “has been tireless and ongoing since 1996 when I began using medical software.

 

 

He writes that “Now the pressure is on to make my tiny practice seamless. I need access to my data outside my office and with a large number of nursing home patients in aged care facilities nearby, I need a virtual private network from a computer in these facilities to print prescriptions and add clinical information and generally keep up to date with patients at three off-site locations. This is not hard to do. For a relatively small amount this can be achieved easily.

“How to achieve this? I bought software to allow any doctor to access their patients’ information from any computer in the world securely and in encrypted form. I added a new version of voice recognition software because my typing is so bad and bought a large inexpensive LCD screen. Voice recognition software translates a patient’s history into my computer with a wireless headset and microphone. Many patients comment as they see their history appearing as if by magic on my large LCD screen that they can see. Inevitably, become more involved in the process. I ask them if there is anything I have left out….

“Perhaps the most effective communication with my patient base is via SMS to patients through a bulk purchase online using my billing program, which allows me to message patients with recall information at the press of a button. There is nothing like an SMS from their GP to increase a patient’s heart rate and get them to return a call immediately. This is particularly so for members of the X and Y generations, who spend their lives glued to their mobile phone screens.

“Do patients respond to SMS on their mobiles from their GPs? You bet they do. Rapid return phone calls come thick and fast. It is gratifying to find a sure-fire method of having patients contact you when you need them. Letters are laborious and slow. SMS is immediate and relatively inexpensive at 18c per message when purchased in bulk.”

Read the whole story here: http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/articles/D0/0C05C1D0.asp

Posted in Australia, e-health, Healthcare | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , ,
2 December 2008

Mixing up ROI for better results

From the Zazoo blog:

One of my passions has been to ’prove’ the effectiveness of digital media by understanding the ways businesses can measure the impact of their online presence and relate it to the rest of their business (see here, here and here for examples of my academic efforts and blog posts in this area). Lots of pundits have been saying that business needs to move away from trying to relate web activity to traditional performance measures such as return on investment (ROI) and instead look at measures associated with customer engagement.

Well, Kyle Flaherty wrote a post for ZDNet (and re-posted on Social Media Today) last week which I think nails it. He argues against using ROI to measure digital activities such as social media and talks about a new measure called Impact of Relationships (IOR). He writes: “ROI was created by someone who wanted to defend their activities in the scope of the bottom line of their company; they found direct linkage between what they were doing and revenue being brought in and if that number was larger than their salary plus additional costs they were in for a bonus (or at least steady employment). Determining your social media ROI is a means to an end. It allows us to prove a programs worth to our business, which enables you to continue your work with the community, which coincidentally lets you dismantle the importance of ROI internally and start to focus on IOR…Impact of Relationships.

“IOR allows me to detail how a relationship develops with our company, whether they are a customer or not, and how that relationship has impacted the totality of our business. Using many of the same techniques above I also measure the amount of interaction we have with our community. Not to measure against revenue, but to determine what product feature requests this person suggested that made our product better, how many comments they leave on our blog, the number of times they reference us on their Twitter feed and more. We’ve been able to formulate IOR for members of our community, many of them non-customers, based on what they have given back to our company.

“Are each of these elements a pure statistical entity or a dollar value? No. But it is a great additional barometer we have to show the gains made through our social media activities. This IOR data becomes just as valuable to the senior staff of your company, but only because they have already seen some level of ROI data. It is only when we prove the ROI that we can reach towards IOR.”

I’ll be interested to see how this concept works out in practice and how it is monetized.

Posted in Business/corporate, e-commerce, e-health, e-marketing, Social media | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , , , ,
2 December 2008

E-health funding ‘boost’ unwrapped

David More offers informed comment on last week’s e-health budget announcement in his Australian Health IT blog. While the media headlines trumpeted a big win for e-health spending (ie, funding for the National E-Health Transition Authority) out of the money allocated at the Council of Australian Governments meeting, David points out that the growth in funding is largely due to the states matching federal funding.

Importantly, he points out that “What this funding of NEHTA for the next few years has done has ensured that its leaders feel vindicated in the way they have behaved – they have essentially been ‘patted on the head’ – and any real stimulus for ‘root and branch’ change has been lost.

“There is also a bit of a problem in that without a co-ordinated national direction it is a little murky as to who will be able to get the full value out of the planned NEHTA spend.

“More importantly what has been lost is the opportunity to put in place the sort of national strategy and national governance of e-Health. This will lead, almost inevitably, to waste and inefficiency in how the new money is spent. Of course that waste and inefficiency will be dwarfed by what will flow from failing to properly automate the health sector.”

He concludes that “What has also been lost is an opportunity to commence planned co-ordinated investment in Health IT in a way that is designed to maximise benefit to all the actors within the health system.”

Read the entire post here.

Posted in Australia, e-health, Healthcare | Leave a Comment »

Tags: , , ,
  |  
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,546 other followers