In our recent healthcare webinar, I argued that pharmaceutical/healthcare marketers should consider using popular Web 2.0/social media tools on pharma-branded websites to help attract audiences that are not currently being reached by these sites. (Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that not all tools will be appropriate for all brands or for all disease categories - this is not an across-the-board recommendation.)

Let’s put some numbers behind this idea:

In one month, 6% of WebMD visitors — more than a million individuals — used the site’s Symptom Checker tool. The discussion boards have fewer visitors but are much more sticky, with users spending an average of over 5 minutes on the boards over the month and viewing more than 7 pages of content.

Both of these features are extremely popular among patients and caregivers. Is there an application for something similar on pharma-branded websites? The idea of discussion boards may be a little more far-reaching, considering the regulations this industry faces. However, the symptom checker tool provides a different kind of interactivity, and might be a model for some brands to consider.

Tags: healthcare, pharma, webmd

At Nielsen Online, we see copious examples of how people are using the Internet to look for healthcare information and to inform their decisions and choices. We wanted to learn more, and in Q2 of this year we conducted an online survey with 1,022 respondents to find out what resources consumers use and trust - both online and offline - as they look for information as part of their healthcare decision-making process. I recently conducted a webinar on this topic (download the full presentation here), but wanted to share an overview of our findings on “Connecting the Dots” as well.

• Doctors and other healthcare professionals remain in the lead when it comes to a resource that consumers would use and trust for healthcare information and this is true across all of the segments we looked at.
• Online resources come in a strong second place - consumers especially trust websites with professionally written content, like the American Diabetes Association website or the content areas of WebMD or Revolution Health. We have entered an era of collaborative healthcare - patients want to play an active role in their treatment decisions - and the ubiquity and 24-hour availability of the Internet is clearly making it a resource that people want to use as part of their healthcare information-gathering and decision-making process.
• When patients and caregivers look online for healthcare information, they are most likely to go directly to sites they know. Pharma/healthcare marketers need to promote their brand and website address across all communication channels to make sure that patients know where to look for this information when they are ready for it.
• People who are frequently involved in social networking (every day or a few times a week) are more active than the average respondent in seeking healthcare information across all different media types. Not only are these frequent social networkers more likely than the average respondent to consult online resources, as we would expect, they are also more likely to turn to family/friends, and even traditional print channels such as newspapers, magazines and books. This is a group of people with intense information-gathering tendencies - they are important to pharma/healthcare marketers because they can be reached through multiple information channels and, in turn, they have the power to influence others through the amplification of their voices in the online/social media environment.
• We also identified a segment of individuals who are Ad Unaware - unable to identify the correct treatment area for some of the top-advertised brands in the world. This group is important for pharma/healthcare marketers because they are not currently being reached through traditional DTC advertising channels. Interestingly, this group seems more open to pharmaceutical companies’ websites than the average respondent. This group is also significantly more likely to participate in social networking than the average respondent. By leveraging some social media/Web 2.0 tools on their own brand websites, pharmaceutical companies may be able to bring this unaware population into the fold.

The Frequent Social Networkers and the Ad Unaware are of special interest to me - I didn’t expect to see some of the behaviors that came through in their survey results. Watch for some additional insights on these groups to be posted in this space in the coming weeks.

Tags: cgm, healthcare, pharma

Can pharmaceutical/healthcare companies leverage social media to better understand their end consumers - the patients? Anyone outside the pharma world might quickly say sure, it seems like a slam-dunk. But inside the pharma world, there are real challenges to taking advantage of the resource that social media represents. Pharma/healthcare companies are very highly regulated in how they communicate with patients, and it’s natural that for many companies, this would translate into a feeling of being limited in how they listen to patients as well.

One area of concern relates to Adverse Events (AEs) with prescription medications. Social media is a different type of communication than what pharma companies are used to getting from patients - it’s informal, and it isn’t necessarily written with pharma companies as the intended audience. Before diving into these waters, many companies want an answer to a key question: How often are AEs mentioned within social media discussion, and do these mentions meet the FDA’s four criteria for AE reporting?

We decided to find out. Earlier this year, Nielsen Online conducted an analysis of 500 healthcare messages across multiple disease categories to understand the extent of AE mentions within social media discussion. While almost all of the messages would meet at least one of the FDA’s AE reporting criteria, we found just 4 (less than 1%) that mention a specific adverse experience, and only 1 that includes all four of the criteria needed to file an AE report with the FDA; that message described a chemotherapy patient who experienced a side effect not listed with the treatment, and asked whether this side effect might mean the treatment is working. The analysis is described in full in a newly published whitepaper available here.

So back to my original question: Can pharma/healthcare companies leverage social media to better understand their patients? Of course, we think the answer is yes - and we’re not alone, judging from the work that many of our clients are doing.

Tags: adverse event, healthcare, pharma