Digital Pharma: iPhone and iPad app update
pharmafile | July 15, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | Blackberry, Digital Pharma blog, ipad, iphone, mobile
How many iPads has Boehringer Ingelheim ordered for its sales force in Turkey? Do Novartis’ investors really want their annual reports in iPad app form? And does Abbott think QR codes are the future?
Those are some of the questions posed by pharma’s latest batch of mobile apps, as the industry’s Apple-focused interest in mobile devices continues apace.
Earlier this year I launched the Digital Pharma Directory, which included the first comprehensive look at mobile apps from the industry, and now it’s time to update the listings.
I’ve gathered more than 30 of the latest pharma apps and they do indeed include a sales app from Boehringer (more on which later), an iPad app version of Novartis’ financial figures and the VasQR code reader from Abbott. The latter was aimed at healthcare professionals attending Euro PCR in May and allowed users to take part in an interactive competition at the cardiovascular conference by using a the QR code reader.
But the most popular category of apps, at least with pharma, remains those for providing medical information for healthcare professionals, and within this group a number of new branded disease calculators have emerged.
These include calculator apps for Janssen’s HIV treatment Prezista and cancer drug Velcade, as well as Novartis’ osteoporosis brand Aclasta. There are also unbranded efforts from Enbrel manufacturer Pfizer in rheumatology and Shire, which markets Vyvanse, in ADHD.
Patient diaries continue to be another popular group of apps. New additions to the Directory include Lilly’s Rate My Day, which allows children or adolescents with ADHD to note their symptoms throughout the day, and Novartis’ Click Track Go app for patients with iron overload.
Playing pharma games with mobile apps
Games have so far been less popular with pharma and they remain something of a sideline as far as the industry’s use of mobile apps is concerned.
Nonetheless the category has swelled slightly with several new additions, including Novartis’ iPad GIST and iPhone Kick Smoking apps (the latter of which ticks several boxes by also functioning as a patient diary and providing health information).
But games run the risk of being mere curiosities, providing little in the way of value beyond a lightweight marketing message.
Take Boehringer Ingelheim’s Dr Trombino game, which involves users controlling a cartoon doctor armed with a bow and arrow. The doctor’s arrows contain a direct thrombin inhibitor (Boehringer markets the direct thrombin inhibitor Pradaxa) and players must use these to hit yellow objects to score points … and that’s it.
It’s not clear who the target audience is, though presumably it’s healthcare professionals, neither is it obvious how well the game can persuade prescribers that a direct thrombin inhibitor can reduce the risk of forming a thrombus and do so better than one of the other new types of drugs in the area now coming through.
However, it’s a work of genius compared to Sanofi’s ‘sheep counter’ app Morfeo for patients suffering from insomnia, whose features include three different lullabies.
iPads and the field force
Much more interesting than counting sheep or shooting cartoon arrows is the emerging trend for pharma companies to release apps that can serve as practical tools for their sales representatives.
They may turn out to be merely the latest incarnation of the oft-maligned detail aid, but the attrition rate among app use is high and the ones that last are those users find a reason to repeatedly return to.
The most striking of these pharma sales apps is Boehringer Ingelheim’s unassumingly named BI Turkey iPad app, which acts as a combined detail aid and CRM tool.
It apparently offers “maximum engagement” between the company’s reps and prescribers in support of Pexola, one of the brand names under which Boehringer markets its restless legs syndrome drug pramipexole in Europe.
Pharma mobile apps
One final trend to keep an eye out for is the launch of apps in non-European languages. The last four months have seen Novartis launch two patient tools, a Chinese smoking cessation app (Kick Smoking) and a Korean app for diabetic and hypertensive patients (Smart Dr). Like Pfizer’s Mon Kronos Sante iPad app Novartis’ Smart Dr also sends patient information directly to their doctor.
Another non-European language app, this time in Japanese, comes from Eisai which has produced an iPad bone care book to provide information on osteoporosis.
Links to all of the apps mentioned in this article, along with others from Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Lilly, IS Pharma Merck Serono, Pfizer, Roche and Vertex, can be found here.
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, LinkedIn or Google+.
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