Digital Pharma: A tweeting of minds
pharmafile | August 27, 2009 | Feature | Medical Communications |Â Â Twitter, digi, digi pharma, digital pharma, hcsmeu, new mediaÂ
I recently attended an event on European healthcare social media. There was no entrance fee, delegate badge or travel to the venue, just the requirement to be online for an hour at a certain time and listen or chat as the mood took you.
Yes, this was a conference conducted entirely through Twitter, or in web parlance, a Tweet Up.
Twitter has been the talk of the web in 2009, and has as many detractors as it has fans. Yes, some people do feel the need to provide the world with a stream of banal updates (having a coffee and looking at clouds etc) but at its best, Twitter manages to bring together communities faster than other media, and allow very rapid and useful exchanges of information. This Tweet Up definitely fell into the latter category.
The event on 7 August was the inaugural meeting of Health Care Social Media Europe, or #hcsmeu as it is identified on Twitter, and this Tweet Up produced the most focused and energetic conversation about social media in healthcare I’ve ever heard.
#hcsmeu is convened every Friday for an hour from 13:00 CET (noon UK summertime), with each hour-long meeting devoted to addressing three separate burning issues.
The inaugural Tweet Up considered: the use of social media in different European countries, differences between US and EU use of social media, and what drives social media adoption in European countries.
Crucially, leading individuals from pharma companies such as Roche and Boehringer Ingelheim are taking part, along with industry bloggers, consultants and comms agency people. And, as with the best social media conversations, interesting and valuable information was shared and a range of perspectives heard.
The group was set up by Andrew Spong of STweM and Silja Chouquet of Whydot Pharma. Andrew and Silja are both web business entrepreneurs with experience in healthcare communications, who have been inspired by the rapid development of social media communities in the US.
The most notable of these is US community Healthcare Communications and Social Media, #hcsm.
Andrew and Silja comment: “We were bemoaning the fact that there was nowhere for health care professionals, patients, health care systems, health content providers, and pharma to gather together in order to interact in real time, when it occurred to us that we could try to create something ourselves that would be fit for the purpose.”
They say the events exceeded their modest expectations in every way.
“We were particularly gratified by the fact that a number of the leading lights of the ground-breaking #hcsm community in the US were kind enough to start their day early in order to support us, and that both official pharma Twitter accounts as well as representatives of national health systems gave of their time in order to join to join the debate.”
The breadth of the debate was matched by the geographical spread of participants, with France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK among the countries represented.
Twitter’s flood of information
Trying to keep up with Twitter has been likened to trying to drink from a fire hose and there was certainly a flood of information on healthcare social media at #hcsmeu.
The first Tweet Up saw conversation centre on why pharma isn’t making use of social media, how it could and whether or not its harder for European pharma compared to their US peers.
One of the fundamental issues in Europe is the lack of guidance from regulators on what can and can’t be done online, something which is holding back Europe just as US pharma is becoming more adventurous online.
In the UK, there may be light at the end of the tunnel, as the PM Society has decided to seize the initiative and will endeavour to thrash out best practice guidelines for the industry to follow.
On a healthcare level, France seemed particularly well represented, with links to the French Web 2.0-ish community Sante Log, a GSK France website/blog that looks to contribute to the debate on the future direction of healthcare in that country and a breast cancer community blog sponsored by Roche. Also from Roche, but this time in Germany there was a link to the company’s Accu-Chek interactive board for parents of kids with diabetes.
The pressing matter of a new arrival to our family (an event I won’t be Tweeting) and my paternity leave, means that I will miss the next few #hcsmeu tweet-ups. I’ll look forward to putting the nappies to one side and catching up with the conversation. In the meantime I’m off to have a coffee and look at some clouds…
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog. He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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