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With over 18 years of global sales experience, Greg joined Visible Technologies in May of 2010 as the Northeast Regional Manager of Sales. He is responsible for business development and helping customers turn social data into social intelligence. Greg has held senior sales positions at Hewlett-Packard and British Telecom.

In his spare time, he enjoys playing team sports and skiing in the winter.

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Adverse Events Shouldn’t Be a Social Barrier for Pharma

Written on
Nov 30, 2011 
Author
Greg Singh  |
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Adverse Events Shouldn’t Be a Social Barrier for Pharma

ADOTAS – Pharmaceutical companies: Face your adverse events (AE) fears. We understand pharma requires careful reporting about what is said on social channels due to compliance guidelines.  In spite of that, it is absolutely critical to participate in the conversation. It’s been 15 years since conversations about social media usage began, and yet we still don’t have the rules in place — so why wait on the sidelines?

Too often we hear from pharmaceutical companies that they see the benefits of social media, but they fear the legal risks, which typically are associated with reporting adverse events. Recently, we tracked 224 pharmaceutical brands, then collected and analyzed more than 257,000 posts across social media sites during a 30-day period. Some of the key findings include:

• 0.3 percent of all posts contained an adverse event (AE) experience.

• Only 14 percent of posts that contained an AE had an identifiable name and contact method to enable pharmaceutical marketers to fill out required paperwork.

• On average, during the 30-day period, each brand received a total of three posts that met the requirements for AE reporting.

These results indicate that pharmaceutical marketers who engage in diligent monitoring of social media for mentions of their brands can expect to see some mention of adverse events. However, adverse events account for a very low percentage of the overall conversations happening online. These conversations can be used positively to help drug makers more effectively identify potential safety issues with a product earlier in its life cycle, minimizing the risk for a crisis and more serious patient outcomes. Social media also offers the opportunity to foster customer relationships and establish more personalized health care services.

As we mentioned in a blog post earlier this year, there are great opportunities for pharma companies to accelerate innovation and build community. Engaging in social media helps build an advocacy program that protects your reputation and leverages public support in both good times and bad.

With social innovation, your company can gain insight into ideas for new products and campaigns, develop the ability to identify and create new advocates, and understand market needs to gain insight into what people are saying about competitors’ products.  Social media provides the opportunity not only to educate your customers, but to be educated by them. There is great value in learning more and being connected to your community in a vibrant two-way conversation.

Get out there, build a community – people genuinely want to help and support each other as they manage and cope with different health issues, and therefore could be important brand advocates. An established community allows for people to voice different experiences when someone posts a negative comment, and to help make sure accurate information is shared in ways that proactively detract from negative comments and mitigate a potential crisis.

The restrictions have certainly not stopped some of the major pharma brands like Johnson & Johnson or Pozen from pursuing their own social initiatives. Pozen, for example, has taken the unusual step of establishing a digital advisory board to help the company form its digital marketing strategy. Johnson & Johnson created the innovative Acuvue Acuminder Facebook application, where people are reminded when it’s time to change their contacts.

Bottom line: The benefits of social media can accelerate market awareness and correct brand misrepresentations, which ultimately outweigh the risks. And the market is moving too quickly to wait another 15 years — it’s time the pharma market kept pace with the consumers in today’s social age.





Reader Comments.

Dear Greg

thanks for the stats. I think if we had more of the stats to show what’s truly being said, then pharma marketers might be more open

techie biotech marketer

Posted by seema | 9:33 pm on December 19, 2011.

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