Digital Pharma: The smokescreen of regulation
pharmafile | June 28, 2010 | Feature | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing |Â Â Janssen, social mediaÂ
When framing a story for the media it is well known in the communications community that a successful piece must have a number of components.
First we must have the challenge, the mission at the heart of the narrative. We then need a hero, the shining figure at the centre of the action battling for the force of good against, well, evil obviously.
For this we need a credible villain. In fact they are probably more important to the success than the hero. In our lives we often secretly find ourselves emotionally drawn to them, whether we are watching a Hollywood blockbuster or a simple TV soap. This is because the truth is often more complex than it appears.
Maybe this explains why recently I have begun to think that for those of us responsible for pharmaceutical company engagement in social media, regulators have become the evil smokescreen.
This is often a displaced complaint against our own medical and compliance teams, people we should have carried with us.
They have become the Lex Luthor to our creative Superman, the Cruella Deville to the large community of marketing and communications’ cute Dalmatian puppies.
Unfortunately the truth is much more complex than this.
The Health 2.0 revolution is now too important for any of us to make excuses. The latest ‘Cybercitizen’ survey from Manhattan shows that across Europe patients are flooding into health communities to find information and support.
This engagement ranges from the cosmetic to people managing a chronic long-term condition such as diabetes. The highest level of engagement (70-80%) is from people caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or cancer.
On top of this nearly three quarters of health care professionals regularly use online communities to help them better manage their patients health.
It is absolutely essential that pharma takes its place in this discussion and steps up to fulfill its responsibility to provide the high quality information and dialogue it is capable of. Not only to help the 50% of health care professionals that would like to recommend websites and communities so they can support and add value to their patients, but also to directly speak with our end users – the patients who now represent the new ‘key opinion leaders’.
The real challenge of the new media revolution does not depend on changing the regulatory environment. There are two sacrosanct guiding principles that underpin the ABPI code of practice in the UK: One is that we must not promote prescription-only medicines to the public, and the second is that we protect the safety of patients by collecting adverse events.
If we get our objectives right we can tackle both of these head on.
This definitely depends on a change of corporate behaviour that is more open and engaged with patients’ language and concerns. If you will allow a moment of platform gazing there are a few examples of things we can do right now.
People do not enter a social network in order to be sold something and I am sure that most patient forums would not appreciate a pharma medic jumping into the conversation to request more information on a possible AE, or to put a poor unsuspecting blogger straight about a product’s efficacy profile.
If we get the objective right we can add value through Twitter, placing a human face on the company – not pushing the company brand or product. We can develop disease-focused communities on Facebook in areas where we have the credibility and the relationships.
Even more important is overcoming the obsession with adverse events online and developing real world data programmes. This will not only enable us to open a new channel to understanding the safety of our medicines but could also enable a more focused form of patient support.
Lets stop blaming other people and start to put patients and health care professionals at the heart of our communication strategy.
Alex Butler is communications manager at Janssen-Cilag and runs its UK Twitter account. The opinions expressed in this guest post are his and not necessarily those of his company.
Read Alex’s previous post, The industry’s real social media question, here.
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