Archive for the ‘doctors’ Category

KellyBarrett
Kelly
Barrett

BDI’s Social Communications & Healthcare 2011: Empowering employees to ‘play’ with social media

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the Business Development Institute’s Social Communications & Healthcare conference in New York City. It was the third year that BDI has put on the conference but one of the first times the event has included such robust case studies from industry leaders.

It is unfortunate that in pharma, we really don’t have many social media case studies to look at, yet. And this isn’t just because social media is new, because really, it’s not that new anymore (and what’s new today is old tomorrow). The problem lies more in the fact that so many companies and agencies are doing innovative stuff that they aren’t yet allowed to disclose. Here at Spectrum, a number of our progressive social media-related initiatives are highly sensitive and stay confidential. However, in the meantime, it’s inspiring to see all the ways people are finding to best socially communicate.

BDI Wrap Up from Zemoga on Vimeo.

(Pixels & Pills covered the event and they provide a ton of great video interviews that you should check out. And New Millenium Research & Consulting has photos up on their Facebook.)

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Posted in Biotechnology, Blogosphere, Community Involvement, Crowdsourcing, doctors, PR Industry, Research, Social Media, Technology
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Anthony LaFauce
Anthony
LaFauce

Can You Hear Me Now: FDA Still Not Talking

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Speak no evil

For the last few months everyone in the PR/marketing industry has been waiting for a few words from our friends at the FDA. I personally wrote about the FDA’s inability to come to terms with a social media policy back in December.

Last year the FDA made a clear statement to the world with this announcement: Our goal is to issue one draft guidance that addresses at least one of these topics during the first quarter of 2011, but we cannot comment any further at this point as to exactly when any draft guidance will issue or any specific order in which the topics will be addressed. The public will be notified officially when any guidance is issued via Federal Register announcements.”

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Posted in Congress, doctors, Food Policy and Nutrition, Health 2.0, Health Care Industry
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Kaitlin Doody
Kaitlin
Doody

What Health Communications Cannot Do

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Last Tuesday, I attended the American News Women’s Club’s first Professional Pursuits Series program. Guest speaker of the night, Molly Mahoney Matthews, founder, CEO andPresident of The Starfish Group, is a seasoned health communication professional who has seen nearly every corner of the healthcare PR space – she has worked agency life; led communications for a hospital; built, managed and sold her own firm; and is now president of her second communications company.

While Molly was fielding questions after her presentation, I asked her to describe what healthcare communications is in two sentences. Like many PR practitioners, I have a hard time explaining what exactly it is I do each day, so I thought this would be a good question to ask of a woman who has been in the field for 25 years.

Molly gave a brief answer about influencing health behavior, but really recommended that I check out the NIH’s “Making Health Communication Programs Work” for a solid definition of healthcare communications. As a budding health and science PR professional, I knew that I should check out this resource.

Posted in Community Involvement, doctors, Health Care Industry, PR Industry, Public Health
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KellyBarrett
Kelly
Barrett

PRSA NCC: Trial and Error Social Media

Monday, February 14th, 2011
Photo credit: Jessica Lewis

Photo credit: Jessica Lewis

As of today, there are over 500 million Facebook users in the world. And sometimes it seems that for every one of those users, there is another opinion on how Facebook should be used. Hundreds of thousands of organizations, government agencies, associations and businesses are working to figure out how to best leverage Facebook in getting their message out to the public. And on Thursday, colleague Frannie Marmorstein and I attended an event that discussed just that (if you missed the event but want to tune in, Strauss Radio has the podcast online here.) There were certainly some interesting opinions laid out by the esteemed panelists, which included:

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Posted in Chronic Disease, doctors, Health Care Industry, Media Relations, Public Health
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Anthony LaFauce
Anthony
LaFauce

Is the FDA Hurting or Helping the Market by Delaying the Social Media Decision?

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

fda
Today the Food & Drug Administration announced that they are going to wait until at least the first quarter of 2011 to give the world official guidance on social media. Mark Senak’s blog post gives us a glimpse into what the FDA is thinking with the delay and the official statement from the FDA:

The Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC) has been researching draft guidance topics on the following issues related to Internet/social media promotion of FDA-regulated medical products:

  • Fulfilling regulatory requirements when using tools associated with space limitations
  • Fulfilling post-marketing submission requirements
  • On-line communications for which manufacturers, packers, or distributors are accountable
  • Use of links on the Internet
  • Correcting misinformation

Our goal is to issue one draft guidance that addresses at least one of these topics during the first quarter of 2011, but we cannot comment any further at this point as to exactly when any draft guidance will issue or any specific order in which the topics will be addressed. The public will be notified officially when any guidance is issued via Federal Register announcements.

I understand the FDA wants to ‘get it right’ but what the industry really needs now is strong guidance and a sense of direction. I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken with clients who are looking for the right answer but know in the current market there isn’t one.

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Posted in Blogosphere, doctors, Health 2.0, New Media, Public Health
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jseng
John
Seng

Father of IVF Has His Day

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

robert-g-edwardsNewsflash from Sweden: The father of IVF (in vitro fertilization) has won the Nobel Peace Prize for medicine.

As CNN reported, the Nobel Prize committee recognized Dr. Robert G. Edwards for developing the process that led to the birth of the first “test tube baby,” Louise Brown, in 1978.

Why do I care? Because less than 20 years later, Spectrum’s role in IVF communications began as we managed the successful media launch of the first recombinant follicle stimulating hormone (rFSH) fertility treatment available in the U.S. Spectrum led marketing communications for the rFSH brand Follistim® for Organon for years, and later guided the media launch of the Follistim Pen® injectable.

I’m proud that we have played a significant role in helping to inform caregivers and families who would like to have children understand the options and the science of IVF that Dr. Edwards pioneered.

Today, our role in supporting couples who are having difficulty becoming pregnant extends into patient advocacy through programs for RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association. We support RESOLVE in its efforts to raise public awareness about a family-building option called embryo donation. Spectrum conducted a highly successful online campaign for RESOLVE in 2009 that raised awareness among the target audiences by an average of 10 percent. In 2010, we launched a unique awareness platform on the topic of embryo donation called “Destination: Family” that offers a clearinghouse of news/information for families considering donating embryos or building a family through embryo donation.

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Posted in Awards, Biotechnology, doctors
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