Digital Pharma: Byte-sized roundup
pharmafile | May 27, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | Twitter, digi game, disease awareness campaigns, doctors.net
This week’s roundup includes the launch of Boehringer Ingelheim’s digital diabetes hub, J&J expands Twitter use, continued international expansion at Doctors.net and Bayer launches Nintendo-compatible Didget in US.
Boehringer Ingelheim has launched its ‘digital diabetes hub’ diabeteshealthlounge.com, as previewed here last week. Aimed at healthcare professionals and journalists in Europe and other non-US markets, it features games (including a diabetes challenge), a diabetes dictionary and, for those with further queries about the condition, an animated oracle is on hand to take questions. There is also a limited amount of this information in a section for the general public, who are offered the chance of sharing their experience of the condition on the site.
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Johnson & Johnson has expanded its Twitter use, launching new accounts for sharing stories from across the group (@JNJStories), focusing on the company’s history (@JNJHistory) and publicising its YouTube channel (@JNJVideo). The company was an early mover in social media, setting up the first pharma corporate blog in 2007 with JNJBTW, and the new Twitter accounts add to a well-established primary presence on the micro-blogging network.
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UK online physician community Doctors.net.uk has followed up last week’s Nordic expansion with a strategic alliance in Latin America and Iberia, partnering with online healthcare marketing company Medcenter Holdings. The two companies will cross-sell and co-market a range of each other’s products and services, including market research, medical education and the promotional services, and say their combination offers the “broadest-reaching online medical marketing communications network outside the US”.
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Bayer has launched its Didget blood glucose monitoring system in the US. The device, which connects with the Nintendo DS or DS Lite handheld games consoles, aims to transform the experience of kids with diabetes by ‘linking play with purpose’. The Didget meter plugs directly into the popular gaming systems, and by doing so children can collect rewards for keeping up with their testing regime. The meter and the Bayer Didget World online community was launched in the UK earlier this year. Further language-specific versions of the website are planed for Slovenia, where the meter was launched in March, and Croatia.
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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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