“That’s crazy,” says Mr. Bough. “You’re going to see more and more companies move to put digital efforts forth. Now, it’s a world of two-way engagement; it’s a world of consumer engagement overall.”

After all, how does a company expect to reach out to consumers when it doesn’t even have technology that is compatible for their use? Despite being the most heavily regulated industry, pharmaceuticals are not exempt from the need to change their current advertising and marketing practices, which includes improving their digital efforts. Gone are the days where television advertisements or ads in print publications will suffice.

“One of the biggest lessons that can be learned from other industries is you have to go where your consumer is, and you have to change your business model to match that,” says Mr. Bough. “We are rapidly becoming a 100 percent digital society.”

In fact, pharmaceutical companies, many of which have only viewed digital communication as an “add-on” and not as central to their marketing and advertising campaigns, are going to have to redefine their efforts if they do not want to be left behind. At least that is what the members of Pozen’s Digital Advisory Board discussed during a roundtable discussion with the media on September 16.

Pozen established the Digital Advisory Board to help progress the company’s vision for revolutionizing its traditional pharmaceutical commercial model as it plans to launch its new products. The new model will be at core of the company’s efforts, and consumer engagement, Pozen’s DAB members agree, is of utmost importance.

Meredith Ressi, president at Manhattan Research and another member of the advisory board, noted that there have been 25 percent fewer drug launches over the past decade. In addition, she says, physicians are now crunched for time, and they can no longer fit meetings with sales representatives into their busy days.

Reaching consumers in the platforms they use, abandoning the one-way messaging model to patients, and instead, moving from a patient-centric model to more of a consumer-centric model – one that also views physicians as consumers – will be crucial.

“It’s about jumping in and really listening to what consumers are saying,” says Raj Amin, CEO and co-founder, HealthiNation, who is also a member of the board.

According to Mark Monseau, the founder and principal at MDM Communications, and former director of corporate communication, social media at Johnson & Johnson, the digital landscape is enabling individuals, whether patients or physicians, to redefine relationships: they are able to self-publish and connect with like-minded individuals. They are also becoming more empowered to make their own decisions. Unfortunately, the traditional pharma model is not consumer-centric, but rather very formal.

That is why a cultural shift within the companies is needed, says Dr. Dan Palestrant, M.D., CEO and founder of Sermo, and another member of Pozen’s DAB. At the end of the day, the biggest hurdle for companies, he says, may not be to determine the appropriate platform – rather, it’s being able to decide the right resources internally. This may require reallocating resources away from existing strategies and dedicating them to one that focuses on a core digital program.

Ineffective organizations, Mr. Bough says, are those that look at digital marking as an “add-on” to traditional strategies. The key, adds Mr. Amin, is to develop a holistic strategy to focus on creating a relationship between the physician groups and the consumer groups.

Dr. Palestrant says pharmaceutical companies also need to realize that controlling the message, including the conversation taking place between the physician and consumer, is no longer possible. Pharmaceuticals need to find ways to become a part of that conversation. He says he was approached by a person he calls an “e-patient advocate.” The woman, who maintained a blog about diabetes, had more than 20,000 people reading her posts each week. Despite the fact that she had this level of readership, the industry was not involved, Dr. Palestrant says.

“Her concern was there is a lot of information that is incorrect or lacking detail, and people were crying out for accurate information in a timely way presented in a format” that they could access, Dr. Palestrant says. “The way to go about doing that is to start figuring out ways to understand that ecosystem and have the structures in place to be able to inject yourself in an appropriate way in the manner in which people are looking for it.”

What’s worse is this: “It will become negligible for companies not to listen to what’s being said in the digital space,” Mr. Bough adds.

Recent efforts by pharmaceutical companies to move into the digital world need improvement, primarily in the realm of building communities. Dr. Palestrant says product portals set up by these companies have been a “100 percent failure. I have yet to see one that actually succeeds.” Rather, if a physician wants to find information, the place he or she is one that is run by the pharmaceutical company.

Ms. Ressi says that while physicians do visit product websites, there will need to be a more distributed model. Companies will need to ask, “How do you be where physicians are?”

Other questions companies can ask: How are they changing their organizations? How are they changing their strategic plans? Is the agency record still focused on traditional approaches only?

“The message is critical in this environment,” Mr. Amin says. Providing real-time information back to consumers when they need it and in the platform by which they can access it is the way to go.

Pozen plans to share the company’s plans for the digital model with other pharmaceutical companies as the company moves forward.

Stay tuned for links to recorded tidbits from the roundtable discussion.

Gaming is a big part of American life. Last year, 50% of households gamed often. Most chose that gaming time over some other media or entertainment. Those immersive, entertaining, often all-encompassing games change people’s expectations for what experiences could and should be like. The same mechanics that keep gamers glued to screens of all sizes can be translated to compelling tools for prevention, treatment management and more holistic care.

Think about it – most of the ways we interact with healthcare are uninspiring. As Ben Sawyer, founder of Games for Health, says the interface of healthcare is broken. We’re not engaging people. We give them 7 minutes in the exam room; confront them with complicated, paper-based adherence tools, and set a lot of requirements, but give few rewards. If we take a look at who’s gaming, we see great potential:

• 68% of American households play video games
• 40% of gamers are women (in fact, a greater number of adult women play than boys under the age of 17)
• 26% of Americans over the age of 50 play video games
• 42% of heads of households play games on a wireless device

*ESA 2009-2010

So how could translating that interface to medicine promote healthier choices and outcomes?

Games lead to healthier behavior and outcomes. To quote Debra Lieberman of the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER), “the beauty of a game is that it gives you a goal.” People work longer and harder if you give them a goal.

Games make people “better patients.” According to study done in the Journal of Pediatrics, patients who use games for health are more engaged in their treatment, show improvement in adherence (16% in this example), and are more knowledgeable about their care plan.

Gaming may be the key to getting us to commit to wellness. Humana has now dedicated part of its innovation department to gaming. Major consumer packaged goods companies are building their offers with wellness gaming. Johnson and Johnson, Unilever, Kraft, Apple, Nike and Disney are developing new products related to health gaming.

*TechWatch, Games for Health: The Latest Tool in The Medical Care Arsenal, 2009

Early adopters are already using gaming mechanics for the ultimate healthy win: sustained behavioral change.

For brands who want to incorporate gaming into their healthcare strategy, marketers must start by asking “what do you want to accomplish?” Healthy brands can use gaming in four basic ways:

1.     Streamline care. Replace reminding and monitoring with involvement and self-tracking

2.     Educate through experience. Use entertainment and experience to create learning people can actually participate in.

3.     Fit into real life. Make tools fun and entertaining so that using them is a want to do, not a have to do.

4.     Reward right behavior. Use positive reinforcement and immediate rewards to sustain behavior change.

Turning that approach into real strategy requires thinking about three connected components: Creating an entertaining experience that people will want to spend time with; Giving them a goal to reach or code to crack that will challenge them; and Setting a reward strategy to incent the kind of behavior we want to see.

For brands who have dabbled in gaming we thought we’d share some common mistakes and how to make them right:

Instead of building the game on your website, make it free standing and mobile.

Instead of asking players to create a new login, let them use an existing login (like Facebook).

Instead of putting a “game face” on an existing experience tool, create an experience that starts from the game.

Our team at iQ regularly creates models, prototypes and storyboards that show how innovative applications of technology can solve persistent healthcare challenges. Some experiments inspire projects, others becoming lasting platforms. We call it Innovation Theater. We always start with a problem and ask “what if.” Here’s an example:

The Problem: Patient adherence

• 28% of patients never fill the first prescription
• 50% discontinue in the first six months
• It’s not as easy as adding recommendations or reminders

The situation is even more challenging in some disease states: for example, up to 72% of asthma patients report that they take their controller medications less than prescribed. Taking that medicine can reduce hospital and emergency visits by 80%. It’s a huge impact on both patients and practitioners.

The “What If”: What if we created a go-anywhere adherence program that helps to make taking medication entertaining and rewarding?

The Result: Avatar Alerts – the mobile companion that rewards you for quick responses. A go-anywhere adherence program that helps to make taking medication entertaining and rewarding.

Avatar Alerts works by inputting or importing a patient’s prescription data. Their mobile device then can alert them through a series of notifications such as phone, text, email and more. If they do not respond to these, they also can choose to alert their support network, such as friends and family. And if they still don’t respond? The patient can choose to notify their social network and deepen their mobile experience online.

Users can log in to track their performance, and use points earned for quick responses to level up and customize their avatar with earned upgrades. The more upgrades the patient earns, the faster their avatar becomes. In addition to customizing the avatar, the patient also can remind – or be reminded by a support network of other patients like them. Within this community, they can compare their progress and even compete against others. When their adherence is on the right track the patient and their avatar finish strong.

So start talking about gaming for your brand. For a discussion guide to help get you started or to see more experiments from iQ, visit: www.whatsyourdigitaliq.com

Leigh Householder is a digital strategist and Ben Harben is associate creative director at GSW Worldwide.

Known for its customer relationship management products, Veeva Systems has never been in the business of closed-loop marketing. But that changed today with the unveiling of Veeva iRep, which the company is billing as the pharmaceutical industry’s first complete customer relationship management and closed loop marketing solution built exclusively for the iPad. 

The login screen for Veeva's iRep

I was in attendance this morning as the company held a launch event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia along with a number of Veeva’s partners, including Apple, Accenture, Cognizant, HighPoint Solutions, Mavens Consulting, and salesforce.com. iRep was introduced to the assembled guests by Peter Gassner, CEO of Veeva Systems. 

Also in attendance was Faruk Capan, CEO of Intouch Solutions. Veeva is partnering on the launch with the interactive pharmaceutical marketing agency. As the inaugural Veeva Web content provider, Intouch will be developing custom creative content for iRep, such as copy, visuals, video, and other interactive components. 

While Intouch Solutions is the first agency to develop CLM content for iRep, Veeva’s Chief Strategy Officer Matt Wallach assured me that iRep is open to all. The specifications for developing detailing materials for iRep will be made available to whatever content partner a client may bring to the table. 

The launch of iRep coincides with an article I had already been preparing for the February issue of Med Ad News. Continuing my long-running series on sales force effectiveness, I wanted to look at the exploding popularity of the iPad within the pharmaceutical industry as reps enjoy the device’s ideal size, long battery life, instant-on capability, and ease of use. I also wanted to highlight the broad range of vendors, like Veeva, who are stepping up to meet the CRM, CLM, and detailing needs of the industry’s sales reps. 

In designing iRep, Veeva did not want to simply port its existing CRM system over to the iPad. Instead, to take advantage of the iPad’s strengths, the multi-channel Veeva CRM functionality in iRep has been completely redesigned specifically for Apple’s touch-screen tablet. 

Veeva iRep's CRM functionality allows users to manage their accounts.

The platform then combines Veeva’s CRM functionality with a content viewer that enables users to present e-detail materials, deliver interactive presentations, and show visual data and video content with built-in recording and reporting functionality to close the marketing loop. 

Veeva iRep's CLM capability allows users to rate a physician's reaction to the product detail.

iRep will be available in February 2011. According to Veeva, during the next few months five leading pharmaceutical organizations in the United States and Europe are already set to hand their reps iPads installed with iRep. 

For more on iRep and other new pharma solutions for Apple’s iPad, look for the full story in the upcoming February issue of Med Ad News.

The TweetPharm aggregator compiles real-time Twitter data from pharmaceutical companies taking advantage of the social media channel into an easy-to-read dashboard and interactive visualizer.

TweetPharm offers a quick reference guide to pharma conversations by displaying all pharma company corporate Twitter handles in one place and linking directly to their Twitter pages; detailing each handle’s number of followers, number of accounts they follow and their latest tweet; displaying updates in real time; and providing the ability to view the data as a sortable list or live infographic.

At a glance, TweetPharm showcases which pharma companies are using Twitter and how they are using it — as a press release tool, to announce open positions, as a dialogue, a newsfeed or in other ways.

“Despite the highly regulated environment, pharma companies are becoming more active in the social media space, especially at the corporate communications level,” says Faruk Capan, CEO, Intouch Solutions. “We wanted to create a useful, at-a-glance resource that demonstrates this involvement. TweetPharm gracefully highlights industry leaders in the twittersphere and how they are engaging with peers, customers, potential employees, investors and press.”

The idea for TweetPharm was born from a simple, static list of pharma companies featured on the Intouch blog. Posted in September 2009, the list received widespread attention from industry insiders, but the list did not update dynamically, and became outdated. Intouch now offers TweetPharm as an open, free service to anyone interested in how pharmaceutical companies use Twitter, and plans to add new accounts as they emerge as well as future updates to the tool.

Intouch Solutions continues to innovate within the digital realm. TweetPharm’s launch follows the September launch of the agency’s share»send»save widget. This tool enables the sharing of content through social networks, sending links via e-mail, and saving or bookmarking information to Web browsers.

The share»send»save widget provides enhanced control in a number of ways. The widget allows site owners to choose what channels — Facebook, Twitter, etc. — are active; enables consistent sharing of specified content and images across channels; ensures the same content is shared across channels; provides the option of an interstitial “you are leaving this site” disclaimer; keeps standard metadata intact for optimal search engine optimization; shares a shortened URL; sends secure e-mails that can include detailed safety information; and offers enhanced tracking, analytics, and customization options. The widget does this without collecting personally identifiable data or displaying third-party advertising, which can be a problem with the free tools currently available.

“Social sharing is important for any industry, and pharmaceutical marketing is no exception. The difference is the special challenges this industry faces when it comes to regulation of content and promotion,” said Faruk Capan, CEO, Intouch Solutions. “There are many ways to share content on a site, but few solutions offer site owners the ability to control how that content is shared. This innovative tool helps provide our clients peace of mind.”

Statistics show that 47% of American social media users are on branded pharmaceutical Web sites to learn about health care or pharmaceutical products¹. Including share»send»save on a Web site empowers visitors to share approved content to social connections, spurring online conversations without exposing site owners to unnecessary risk. Developed by Intouch Solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, the share»send»save sharing widget gives users the ability to share content on social networks, send site links to friends or colleagues, and save Web sites to their browser bookmarks. Unique features allow pharmaceutical companies to capture the power of social marketing without sacrificing brand integrity, sharing incorrect information, or taking other unnecessary regulatory risks.

“With Vimovo now available in pharmacies across the country, AstraZeneca is excited to launch this new Web site, which puts healthcare providers just a click away from important information about Vimovo,” says Lisa Schoenberg, VP, commercial brand leader-specialty care, AstraZeneca. “With the launch of VIMOVOtouchpoints, AstraZeneca has created an interactive and convenient forum for physicians to learn about a new treatment option for osteoarthritis pain in patients at risk of NSAID-associated gastric ulcers.”

The Web site enables physicians to click to connect to a personal account specialist and have 24/7 access to information about the product. The resource provides physicians with a variety of helpful tools and information about Vimovo.

Healthcare professionals are able to click to chat with a personal account specialist; order Vimovo samples online; watch physician-led online meetings about Vimovo; as well as learn more about the product through in-depth information on efficacy, safety and tolerability, access, and affordability.

“Many of the 27 million Americans affected by osteoarthritis treat their symptoms with NSAIDs,” says Robin K. Dore, M.D., rheumatologist and clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Anaheim and private practice in Tustin, Calif. “However, one half of chronic users are at risk of developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers, which may compromise effective management of the disease. In a single pill, Vimovo delivers both the proven osteoarthritis pain relief of naproxen while reducing the risk of developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers.”

“Entering the second decade of the 21st century, the imperative to take a human-centered approach in everything rings loud,” Ms. Hoenig-Carlson says. “This means getting inspired by people; especially those who share the condition which we seek to improve, and adopting a more collaborative and engaging orientation. Excelling in a patient-centered world requires that we observe and dialogue with customers in their real-life environments.”

Six key themes emerged in the book:

1) e-Patients are at the center and critical to learning and design;

2) Authenticity isn’t a “nice to do”, but a “must have”;

3) Don’t get distracted by social media bells and whistles – remember the basics (especially SEO) and keep your brand core strong;

4) The marketing cycle of life is going through unprecedented change requiring the industry to unlearn much – movement from paid marketing to earned marketing requires a different mindset and skills;

5) New marketing requires new ROI thinking…the ROI of connection, authenticity and compassion; and

6) Effective marketing and engagement requires new kinds of leadership skills.

According to Ms. Hoenig-Carlson, the early response to the book has been positive. “We’re seeing continued interest as healthcare marketers dig into complex change,” she says. “Social media, e-patients, consumers, and healthcare organizations continue to converge online, and brands are challenged to find a new voice and new online roles.”

The e-book is posted on the AdvanceMarketWoRx site at: http://bit.ly/5kuxO5.

As future business leaders, today’s children are primed to work and collaborate in a real-time, 3D virtual setting. ProtonMedia is laying the groundwork for that future as the developer of ProtoSphere, a virtual social environment in which users’ computer avatars can meet for online teaming and collaboration. ProtonMedia’s customers include such life sciences companies as AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.

Although Ms. Kittrel acknowledged that as of now, interest in the possibilities of virtual collaboration far outstrips actual adoption, as her examples demonstrate, for the next generation of life sciences CEOs, researchers, and sales people, a second life will be second nature.

Microsoft’s Sam Batterman, who goes by the title “business intelligence evangelist,” spoke today about how these virtual collaboration environments function as far more than just the “N” drive on a company’s network. For example, in addition to document and application sharing, ProtoSphere provides the tools teams need to collaborate socially online, including holographic virtual spaces with interactive avatars and bots, VoIP audio conferencing, text chat, presence awareness, video streaming, blogs, wikis, feeds, role-playing simulations, content workflow, and enterprise social networking. For the life sciences industry, Mr.  Batterman suggests uses such as constructing virtual data rooms, a chemistry plaza, or innovation and ideation networks.

The big question is, why do all this in a virtual environment? Why transform the collaboration companies do every day into a massively multiplayer online role-playing corporation? The answer, according to panelist and ProtonMedia CEO Ronald J. Burns, is that in a virtual collaboration environment, it’s not just the charts and graphs and documents housed in the online environment that have value; the avatars themselves have value. The skills and expertise held by the real-world personalities behind the avatars are available and accessible.

But that’s not the only reason, according to panelist Tony O’Driscoll, a professor of the Practice of Business Administration at Duke University. He believes that virtual collaboration online represents the third generation of the Web, the point where the user is enveloped within the content.

The author of Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration, Mr. O’Driscoll highlights the value of learning in 3D environments with the equation I x I = E. That is, Interactivity times Immersion equals Engagement. His research has found that bringing people together in virtual learning environments can have a positive impact on the learner’s engagement with the material. According to Mr. O’Driscoll, learning leadership is not only possible in the virtual environment, it’s an ideal venue in which to do so.

In the gaming world, roles change quickly and decisions must be made rapidly, on the fly. Gamers must assimilate numerous sources of input to develop strategies and put plays into action. The gamer must then quickly develop new skills in order to advance through the game. The same principles of learning, advancement, and reward can be transferred to the business world, according to the proponents of virtual 3D collaboration technology.

Before virtual collaborations can gain traction in the business world, however, a critical mass will need to be reached of senior leaders ready to adapt to new technology, according to panelist Tom Kaney, managing partner, MKP Partners.

It may just be a matter of time. Today’s 13-year-old 7^th level mage fighting orcs in Azeroth is tomorrow’s pharmaceutical sales rep or oncology researcher. She’ll be ready to bring the power of virtual collaboration to the workplace, if companies like ProtonMedia don’t succeed in getting there first.

My full conversation with John Kamp follows.

Med Ad News: What was your assessment of the industry’s performance Thursday and Friday?

John Kamp: I thought it was pretty good. The regulated companies and their trade associations actually stepped up. Several companies – Pfizer, J&J, Sanofi-Aventis, Lilly – all had pretty good testimony. I was particularly pleased that PhRMA was able to put a specific proposal on the table, and it received a lot of discussion. They were essentially trying, as we were, to get some discussion around ways to get the FDA regulated communication more easily available to consumers and others, and I thought it was a positive step to make that proposal. AdvaMed was also there, very serious about their matters. The media were there. So, I think it was pretty important. One of my colleagues [Peter Pitts, of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest] called it the Super Bowl of Part 15 Hearings, and I think that might be right.

Med Ad News: Do you think it was a generally fairly unified voice, or were there dissenting opinions?

John Kamp: Unified voice? No. We’d all be suspicious if that were the case. But not so much dissent. People had different ideas. The industry and even the consumer groups did coalesce around some basic ideas, and one of those would be that FDA must enable companies to more aggressively operate in this space. That FDA shouldn’t expect that individual drug, device, and bio companies can control everything on the Net, particularly what goes on in the social media space. That instead it ought to be that if you’ve got control, then you’ve got responsibility, and you must take that control when you’ve got it. But if you don’t have that control, you don’t have responsibility. There were quite a few ideas about how to, in effect, develop a one-click away or a solution that more effectively enables companies to do the best they can to get people to read the contraindication information. So, there was a lot of agreement, I think.

And I was impressed that FDA – although this is a Part 15 hearing where they can’t telescope or make policy –asked some awfully good questions. They were listening, but it was active listening. And I was impressed by both the care with which they listened, the kind of questions they asked. These lead me to believe that they’re paying attention. They know they can do better, and they are going to.

Med Ad News: That’s an interesting point you raise, because like you said, they weren’t there to talk, they were there to listen. But in terms of the questions they were asking, can you give me a sense of the issues that seemed to be important to them or that registered with them enough to question?

John Kamp: Well, we can just use the PhRMA proposal that there be some kind of device on banner ads that enable people to immediately go to the contraindication information. They asked a lot of questions about it. My guess from it is that although the idea of doing this was one they thought was interesting, the idea of making it an FDA related icon is a non-starter. But doing something like that, I think they’re taking it into serious consideration or they wouldn’t be asking the questions.

Med Ad News: So, in general, a productive couple of days?

John Kamp: Yeah. I think FDA is likely to make some things clear. None of us expect, as one of the speakers put it, to see a package to industry under the Christmas tree with a new policy in it. Things like that don’t happen in the government. But there were a couple of things that the people asked for that the FDA has already been pretty clear about, and I think they can continue to be pretty clear about that.

One of them is this whole idea that, although there is a lot of concern in the industry that they might be held responsible for things they don’t control. I’ve never heard the FDA say that. And I expect them to say that that’s not the case in public speeches. The adverse-event reporting stuff is not an issue of DDMAC for the most part. It’s being driven by company lawyers. But for FDA to be real straightforward about that there’s no expectation that companies be responsible for things that clearly the responsibility of the individual people on the Net who are using their browser or that they somehow stop things from being put on the Net by third parties; they’ve never expected that. For them to say that straightforwardly, I would expect to hear very soon.

Med Ad News: Even prior to some kind of official guidance?

John Kamp: Yeah, I think they’ll be more straightforward. Not so much DDMAC staff, but Bob Temple, who is very important in these areas, has been talking very openly and straightforwardly about the adverse-event reporting stuff and telling companies, “Stop telling us all this information that’s not useful.

Med Ad News: Why do you think FDA did this now, as opposed to years ago? Is it just because they’ve finally caught up, or does it have to do with the change of administration?

John Kamp: There is a growing realization that the Net is a different medium and needs specific focus and understanding. I think for the most part this was probably considered and planned well before the election, frankly. Did everybody check with their new bosses before they went forward? Yeah. People do that. But I think it’s just a growing realization that they need to pay attention.

Med Ad News: The time had come.

John Kamp: Yeah. And maybe we wish it had happened earlier, but it didn’t. But now that it’s here, let’s embrace it.

TGaS Advisors, a benchmarking and advisory services firm serving the pharmaceutical industry, brought together digital marketing executives at GlaxoSmithKline, Novo Nordisk, Ortho-McNeil Janssen, Sanofi-Aventis, Shire, Takeda, and other companies to develop consensus on key aspects of FDA Guidelines on social media. Their conclusions, together with benchmark information gathered from 62 brands across 18 companies, are being presented at the DDMAC hearings today, Friday, Nov. 13, by Donna Wray, who heads the Internet and Relationship Marketing Practice at TGaS Advisors.

Ms. Wray will present the group’s consensus on adverse-event reporting in the morning session and on correcting user-generated content and regulatory requirements on language in the afternoon.

Suggestions on adverse-event reporting

Adverse-event reporting requires four distinct criteria: an identifiable patient, an identifiable reporter, a suspect drug or biological product, and an adverse experience or fatal outcome suspected to be due to the suspect drug or biological product.

According to TGaS Advisors pharma industry panel, adverse-event reporting is treated as very important by the industry, but the panel believes that adverse-event reporting across the entire Internet is impossible. Most people post anonymously for one thing, and contact information is rarely available. For another thing, the quantity of posts is simply too large to even attempt to track down details for all of them.

The TGaS Advisors panel believes that when pharmaceutical companies monitor online user-generated content, they learn a great deal. They learn about misconceptions to improve their communication and about potential problems and better methods. And this learning is good for the public health. The panel believes that FDA should acknowledge this and encourage more learning.

The panel’s suggestion to FDA at today’s hearing is that the agency should continue current adverse event reporting processes, plus encourage more use of Medwatch Online Reporting Form (3500). The agency should consider general publicity promoting the form (sponsored by the FDA or by a trade organization) and allow (but not require) pharma companies and their agents to post a single line with a link to refer to the location of the Medwatch information. For example, “To report a serious medical product problem, see the FDA’s Medwatch.”

Correcting user-generated content

When it comes to the issue of correcting of user-generated content on the Internet, the TGaS Advisors panel wants FDA to realize that content not provided by the brand is never up to regulatory standards, and even doctors don’t use “fair balance.” Within a brand, time for reviewing and correcting material is a minimum of four weeks, across pharma companies and brands. And most user-generated content has no mechanism for a “correction.”

A comment posted as a correction, meanwhile, may be placed far from the original misinformation. Wikis, which are collectively edited, are notorious for “edit wars.”

What the brand doesn’t own, it can’t ensure the quality of, the TGaS Advisors panel says. Correcting of most misinformation is not advisable and gives an air of authority to content that is not authoritative. To correct one piece may imply that the content will be monitored over time and “re-corrected.”

Meanwhile, correcting all misinformation is impossible. The number of Wikis alone numbers in the millions according to wikia.com. The average product name is mentioned in more than a half-million Web pages on the Internet today, using a Google search.

The TGaS Advisors panel recommends having an official mechanism to allow people to distinguish between content subject to FDA regulations and other content. An official “seal” would appear on brand site and with other content subject to FDA guidance. The “seals” would all link to a common page explaining 1) that FDA protects the public health through guidance for marketing, 2) what high standards marketing is held to, and 3) the important role of other sources, such as recognized medical experts

Another idea the panel has is to post way signs leading to official content. An average of 10% of brand site visitors come from Wikipedia. Wikipedia, while largely useful, has a lot of content from non-experts, and the link to the brand site is near the bottom of each Wikipedia entry. The TGaS Advisors panel suggests encouraging prominent sites to post a link to official info and allow pharma companies and their agents to post a single line or link to refer to the location of the official site, as in “For information from the manufacturer, see the official Product site.”

Adhering to regulatory requirements

The TGaS Advisors panel is also offering some ideas on adhering to regulatory requirements. When it comes to ads with very limited space, such as some paid search ads, the panel recommends the ads be either reminder or unbranded advertising. When it comes to ads with somewhat limited space, such as banner advertising, they recommend 50% of important safety information appear in final frame. And when it comes to serial media, such as online video or audio content, claim and fair balance should appear in equal prominence and at close proximity.

Digitas Health is growing, officially expanding its global presence with Digitas Health London and Digitas Health Boston. The agency’s expansion suits the needs of its clients with international reach.

“This digital re-engineering that’s taken place in marketing started first in the U.S., but is beginning to broaden around the world,” says David Kramer, CEO, Digitas Health. “At the center of this digital innovation in pharma is the need for efficiencies, as well as the fact that these online media represent such a powerful tool to communicate about health.”

The Digitas Health London office marks the beginning of the agency’s international expansion efforts, beginning in Europe. According to Mr. Kramer, some of the business that Digitas had been doing domestically began to broaden and move across the Atlantic.

The agency has appointed June Dawson as senior VP, managing director. Ms. Dawson was the digital business director for the London office of Ogilvy Healthworld and brings more than a decade of pharmaceutical interactive marketing to the role. Her career has included work in integrated communications, public relations and journalism, and she has led marketing efforts for many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical brands.

Being in the United Kingdom allows Digitas Health closer contact with two of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. These companies comprised 10.1% of the global market share in 2007. Pharmaceuticals are one of Britain’s leading manufacturing sectors, bringing in a trade surplus of £4.3 billion ($8.61 billion) in 2007.

“There’s something very special about the creative culture in London from a pan-European perspective,” says Larry Mickelberg, executive VP, strategy and new business, Digitas Health. “The edginess that we’ve come to admire and enjoy from our colleagues in London is something that we’re very much looking forward to infusing in Digitas Health throughout our offices. This is a strategic, creative, and a technological play for us.”

Just as in the United States, Digitas Health London is digital at the core and aims to build agency-of-record status with clients. Having a London presence will also benefit the overall culture of the Digitas Health network.

“My role here is to focus on helping our clients in the U.S. to expand into Europe,” Ms. Dawson told Med Ad News. “I will be driving the development of existing business, as well as looking at growing business. Budgets here in Europe for digital marketing communications are still buoyant and increasingly brands are working in this space to maximize their marketing spend. Investment is transitioning from traditional media to digital channels.”

The European market is complex and individual. Many of the major brands use London as their central hub for marketing communications.

“I joined because there isn’t another network quite like Digitas Health in Europe,” Ms. Dawson says. “A huge difference between healthcare marketing here is that we don’t have DTC, but are expert in building disease education and awareness initiatives.”

A simultaneous expansion to Boston provides Digitas the opportunity to reach the talented people within Digitas and beyond who have healthcare and emerging media experience and the significant interest to expand the Digitas Health concept for clients across the globe. With the abundance of life science companies and a large selection of universities and leading scientific research institutions, Boston ranks No. 1 one on the list of the largest life science clusters in the U.S. With more than 700 pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotech companies, Massachusetts is also first in the nation in the number of life-sciences patents per capita.

As the nature of healthcare marketing becomes more sophisticated, Digitas Health is eager to draw on the skill sets of those who have launched some the world’s most creative and successful marketing campaigns for clients across leading consumer industries — such as automotive, hospitality, and finance — and to share that knowledge base across the agency. Digitas Health Boston is located within the Boston headquarters of parent company Digitas, which offers a deep reservoir of talent and represents an important extension of the health brand’s domestic footprint. The agency is looking forward to the Digitas Health Boston practice being able to take advantage of the skill sets and experience in creating very large-scale digital productions on behalf of clients

Serving as the lead marketing and creative executives in Boston are Kirk Williamson, senior VP, marketing; and Michael Tiedemann, senior VP, creative. Mr. Williamson brings 18 years of consumer and healthcare marketing and general management experience to the role, including several years with Gillette/Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., and Frito-Lay. In addition, he served as an independent consultant in the consumer health and device markets.

As creative lead, Mr. Tiedemann transitioned to the role from parent company Digitas, where he had worked for a decade as the relationship creative lead for many of the company’s highest profile clients in the automotive and financial services industries. As creative director for the Digital Solutions Group at Prodigious, a Digitas company and the world’s only standalone global digital productions company, Mr. Tiedemann standardized the user experiences across multiple brands for a major client

Physical expansion is not the only way Digitas Health wants to grow. Mr. Mickelberg says Digitas expects to do more original research and thought leadership work with the goal of continuing to drive a point of view on the evolution of healthcare marketing.

“That’s something that we’ve stood for since the beginning of Digitas Health and something we will continue to expand now in new geographies,” Mr. Mickelberg told Med Ad News.

In each of the last three years the agency has experienced increased annual revenue growth of about 50%, and in the past year alone, the agency has achieved 14 new client brand wins. Mr. Mickelberg says the agency has been broadening service offerings to existing clients and to new clients during and before the past 12 months.

“Starting really as a digital agency, we’ve been adding services in the areas of social marketing, in the areas of mobile marketing, and in the areas underlying search and media for years,” Mr. Mickelberg told Med Ad News. “We continue to add a range of services that are geared really more toward traditional marketing venues like television and print and others. We’ve been on a journey to really become — by any definition — a full-service marketing agency with digital at the core of everything we do.”