- 15 February 2008
- Author: Onyx Health
- Posted in: New Influencers
- Tagged under:
The Pharmaceutical Advisor’s Blog
I recently had a conversation about Bloggers with a number of product managers. Whilst they had some concerns about patient Bloggers, most seemed oblivious to healthcare professionals developing Blogs and the potential influence they may have.
Although there are quite a few doctors who are very active and willing to share their opinions in the forums on www.doctors.net, not many actually produce personal Blogs. But Blogging is certainly going to be one of the ways forward to influence others in the medical profession.
There are already a couple of good examples appearing that could have a positive or negative impact on brands. www.prescriber.org.uk is a great example of how a pharmaceutical advisor can influence GPs.
Matthew Robinson, the author of the Blog, sends out daily commentaries about various drug related issues. Matthew scours the medical press on a daily basis to source information that he thinks is pertinent to primary care prescribing. Today he is talking about the influence that the pharmaceutical industry may have on nurse prescribing, yesterday he talked about clopidogrel rebound following a study published in JAMA, and on Tuesday he posted highlights of a study comparing nicotine replacement with Champix. The other good thing about Matthew’s Blog is that he always gives an action point so GPs know what to do with the information.
Matthew is of course not the only pharmaceutical advisor writing a Blog. The launch of the National Prescribing Centre’s NCPi website now gives pharmaceutical advisors and pharmacists an opportunity to participate in discussion forums and write Blogs about issues they are concerned about.
So what can pharma do to engage with Bloggers? The PMPCA currently recommend that pharmaceutical companies do not sponsor Blogs and to be perfectly honest I cannot see any real value in doing so. However, companies should be engaging with Bloggers by having an open and honest dialogue with them and being upfront about their needs. It is also important that Bloggers are kept up-to-date and given the latest clinical data about a particular brand. Bloggers could also be quite useful in helping companies get the right messages out behind a particular product problem, recall or discontinuation and therefore their influence should not be under estimated.