Posts Tagged ‘Social media’

Kevin
Walsh

ePharma Summit Recap

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Thanks to all the presenters who braved "Snowmaggedon" to present at this year's ePharma Summit in Pennsylvania.    

There were a lot of interesting presentations including some highlights from @skypen on his recent FDA interview with DDMAC's Dr. Jean-Ah Kang. 

Of particular interest to me, since we are actively involved in developing guidelines and training, was the presentation from Mel Halkyard, who discussed the process she manages at Eli Lilly to implement social media guidelines and practices. 

When talking about her learnings from the process, which is almost complete, Mel highlighted several themes:

  • 1. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). When talking about personnel guidelines, it is important that everyone understands what is needed and required.
  • 2. It's important to ensure that your social media guidelines are in sync with the rest of the personnel policies and procedures you already have in place.
  • 3. It s a good idea to assign ownership so that there is a clear decision tree, and decisions can be made when needed. Ideally, a single point of contact, possibly a Social Media Czar, or an Interdisciplinary Social Media Steering Committee. Also needed is the sponsorship of senior leadership; preferably from someone who also sees the value proposition. (more...)

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Kevin
Walsh

Crowdsourcing for a Cause

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

I just read an excellent article about crowdsourcing health care solutions by Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired.  The article, titled "Harvard-Based Crowdsource Project Seeks New Diabetes Answers," describes in great detail a new initiative to crowd source diabetes information with an end goal of curing Type I diabetes.  (Almost 2.4 million people in the US suffer from Type I diabetes.) "Using federal stimulus funding from the National Institutes of Health, Harvard Catalyst has teamed up with InnoCentive to explore whether open innovation and crowd-sourcing can spark new directions, collaborations and research in the healthcare community."

Congratulations to the National Institutes of Health for funding this and to Harvard's medical research department for developing this crowdsourced medical initiative sure to help those with Type I diabetes.

What's particularly interesting about the first phase of this project is the goal of ideation. The project's initial objective is not to identify a specific cure, but to start with the basic premises that there are questions or criteria that may not have been considered before now. (more...)

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Leah
Moon

10 Steps for Building a Social Media Campaign

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Last Friday I attended an event sponsored by PRSA National Capital Chapter on social media strategy and measurement. The following ten steps for implementing a social media campaign were presented at the event.

  1. Listen -Identify who is saying what about your brand. Listening is the first step to participating in social media.
  2. Share of Voice/Messaging - Determine your brand's share of voice (total mentions of a concept/brand/message). Consider if the mentions are positive or negative and understand where these conversations and messages are found. Then, map your key messaging according to the content of conversations.
  3. Set Goals and Benchmarks - Decide what you wish to accomplish with your social media campaign. Set tangible numbers to reach and then determine the amount of time it'll take you to reach that goal.
  4. Discover Communities and Bloggers that Matter -Who is currently talking about you and your brand? Locate communities that already exist and see how you can engage those interested groups. (more...)

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Megan
Lustig

Relationships 2.0

Friday, November 20th, 2009

So much has changed in just the four years since I've joined the communications industry. The exponential growth of social media, blogs and digital tools has caused us to take a step back and reexamine the most strategic way to deliver key messages to our clients' target audiences. And we continue to hear how newsrooms at some of the nation's leading outlets are shrinking, with many of the journalists who we've worked with over the years now freelancing, as opposed to holding a full-time position at one news outlet.

Yet one aspect of communications that has not changed is the power of relationships. While the communications industry is constantly evolving and embracing new tools, continuing to establish and build strong relationships is still at the core of media relations. This may seem like a no-brainer, but in today's fast-paced, changing media landscape, it is something that can often be overlooked. (more...)

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Leah
Moon

Searching for Health Information

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

According to a June 2009 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 61 percent of adults say they look online for health information. As the percentage of e-patients is growing, it is important to provide credible health information to this group. HealthMashTM is a new example of this.

HealthMashTM, a search engine for health information currently in beta version, launched earlier this month. It combines Web 2.0 universal search and discovery technology with Semantic Web Concepts in a simple, yet highly informative user interface. (more...)

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Melissa
Biller

The FDA Has No Idea What To Do About Social Media – Day 2 of the FDA Public Hearing

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

After attending last week's FDA public hearing on the internet and social media, two things stood out in my mind:

  • Pharmaceutical companies will not be taking "risks" or investing in social media until there are clear, identifiable guidelines from the FDA - as of now, pharma is living in a state of fear of social media
  • The FDA knows there is a need for implementing guidelines for pharma, but it seems they really don't know where to begin...they are looking for strategic recommendations from stakeholders - they've never been in this space before and are honestly looking for help on how to best approach it

Whereas day 1 of the hearing focused solely on Questions 1-4, the morning of the second day was dedicated to Question 5 - Internet adverse event reporting (for a quick re-cap of the first day of the hearing, check out my blog post "This is the Super Bowl of Part 15 Hearings"). If you are familiar with the pharmaceutical industry, you are well aware that adverse event reporting is a very sensitive subject, so I was particularly interested to hear the speaker presentations. I was actually excited to hear the audience reactions to the recommendations. (more...)

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