subject: Pharmaceutical Social Media: New Trails Being Blazed [print this page] There's something exciting happening in the pharmaceutical industry and it involves pharmaceutical social mediaIt's inspiring unusual collaborations, new companies, and -- most importantly -- some great offerings for people in all walks of health.
The burgeoning growth of pharmaceutical social media is being demonstrated in a number of ways new apps, products, and startups and, of course, a change in how companies develop new platforms and interact with patients. For example, Ginger.io, a behavior analytics company that helps patients and healthcare enterprises manage diseases, has become quite successful and has attracted venture funding.
Crowdsourcing is becoming fashionable and even the pharma industry is jumping on board. Some companies are asking members of the health ecosystem for ideas for apps and then funding the most promising ones, which will certainly lead to advances in the use of pharmaceutical social media.
Harnessing the power of Pharmaceutical Social Media through the development of new apps has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine throughout the world by delivering information faster and more economically than ever before. Delivering information to caregivers, patients, advocacy groups, doctors and other important communities and uniting those communities may be one of the highest and best uses for pharmaceutical social media. The potential to go beyond Facebook pages is enormous.
When big pharma leverages technology through advances in pharmaceutical social media to develop innovative patient-facing apps, everybody wins. They win with faster, better, and more efficient ideas; they win again if they apply lessons from the process to other aspects of their organization; start-ups win by getting both a big partner with a vested interest in their success and key early attention; and, most importantly, the patients win with more innovative tools and services.
To recap Consider the potential of digitally-enabled disease management. Pharmaceutical companies crowdsource new therapy options while patients engage in trials, with data publicly available. Clinicians monitor patients via implants, smart phones and freestanding machines. Population-based warning systems via Twitter and GPS-aware applications can save more lives much faster than the evening TV news. The wonders of a wired world await
