Digital Pharma: Byte-sized roundup
pharmafile | July 19, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | Amgen, Digital Pharma blog, EMA, Sermo, digital doctors, google, psoriasis
This week’s roundup includes EMA’s new look website, a psoriasis patient group’s e-commerce venture, Amgen’s online patient empowerment competition, changes in the way Google ranks US health results and new monitoring tools from Sermo.
The European Medicines Agency’s re-designed website, plans for which were revealed by Digital Pharma in February, went live last week. The site aims to make it easier for visitors to navigate and includes a number of new features, including a dedicated medicines search function and an online library. There are also plans to introduce more multimedia content and improve the site’s search functionality over the next year. The site, which is used by patients, healthcare professionals, regulators and the pharma industry, receives on average half a million unique visits a month.
– – – – –
Google has partnered with the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) on a new medication search initiative. This sees pharma’s ‘brand.com’ websites displaced as the top-ranked link by product information hosted on the NIH site and produced by the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists (ASHP). The ePharma Rx blog wrote about this first last month here. Google subsequently told Kurt Mueller, who runs Roska Digital’s blog: “Google has partnered with the NIH to license their information to serve it through Google. The goal is to provide NIH results for all drugs searches [brand and generic], so there is a consistent, credible source of health information.”
– – – – –
US online doctors community Sermo has launched a new service that allows “advanced mining and monitoring of organic physician dialogue”. Companies can use Sermo’s new Client Center to monitor real-time physician discussions about areas of interest, follow discussions and see live updates as new content appears. At the same time Sermo has redesigned its website to make it easier for doctors to find topics of interest and participate in discussions.
– – – – –
The Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Association (PPAA) has launched an e-commerce shop where visitors can order information, subscribe to its publication and make donations to the UK patient group. The PPAA aims to become a leading source of information for patients, and as part of these plans is developing online training programmes for patients and healthcare professionals. “Two major projects are already underway and these will be accessible once developed from the new site,” a spokesperson said.
– – – – –
Amgen is offering three $10,000 prizes through the online Patients, Choices, Empowerment competition for the best ideas on how to improve patient empowerment. The company’s philanthropic arm the Amgen Foundation is partnering with social action community Ashoka’s Changemakers on the initiative, which aims to tap into the medical experience, knowledge, and wisdom of current and past patients, health care practitioners, advocates and other key stakeholders. Entries must be in by 29 September, and the winners will be announced in December. Amgen says it will consider awarding up to $1 million in further grants to support promising patient empowerment innovations submitted to the competition by qualifying non-profit organisations.
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.
Related Content
Rethinking oncology trial endpoints with generalised pairwise comparisons
For decades, oncology trials have been anchored to a familiar set of endpoints. Overall survival …
NICE issues positive final guidance for treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy from Santhera
Santhera Pharmaceuticals has received positive final guidance from the National Institute for Care and Excellence …
Eplontersen recommended for EU approval by CHMP for treatment of hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis
Wainzua (eplotersen), produced by AstraZeneca and Ionis, has been recommended for approval in the European …
