- 19 October 2007
- Author: Onyx Health
- Posted in: Social Networks
- Tagged under:
All Change – The Online Influencers
So is it time for pharma in the UK to wake up to Web 2.0? For years pharma has used the KOL cascade effect as a way of influencing other doctors to prescribe their products, but the Web 2.0 social phenomenon is changing all that. Gone are the days when it took 5 years for a paper presented at a clinical meeting to change clinical practice, today this change is instant. Web 2.0 technology allows doctors to rapidly respond to papers published online, debate them in forums and give advice to colleagues on how to implement the findings into everyday clinical practice.
Social networks are helping physicians to share best clinical practice, challenge and collaborate each others ideas and accelerate the emergence of trends. Doctors.net forums regularly see doctors asking for more information about particular brands, asking colleagues if they have started prescribing and wanting to know if the promotional claims stand up in clinical practice. With DoctorPortal soon launching its social network, online influence is going to become the norm. It is unlikely that we are going to see our traditional KOLs setting up Blogs, but the Young Guns snapping at their heels may see this as a way of raising their personal and research profile.
From pharma there is of course an air of caution, this is a grey area for the ABPI Code of Practice and adverse drug reporting is holding companies back. To fully benefit from Web 2.0 pharma is going to have to be much more transparent and allow the online community to openly debate the pros and cons of brands. For years we have been promoting the benefits of a brand far and wide, whilst keeping the objections to the confines of the doctors office. This is a major shift for the industry to make. Doctors are no longer happy to simply watch a webcast of a satellite symposium or medical event; they want to interact with the speaker and the others in the audience. They want to air their views and ask others what they think. They want to rate the presentation giving it their endorsement and encouraging others to view it. A short web or pod cast from a doctor can have a tremendous impact on a brand.
Web 2.0 is certainly a hot potato but there is one thing for sure, sitting back an doing nothing is not the answer. The industry needs to start engaging with customers online and experimenting with what works for their particular customers and brand. In the US Pfizer has just done a deal with Sermo, the largest medical social network which allows their medics to openly interact with their doctors on-line. So it is time to get this discussion out in the open and debate what is and is not possible with Web 2.0.
Let’s start with four questions:
- Do you see any benefits of Web 2.0 to the industry?
- How favourable is online promotional activity perceived within the industry?
- Should company medics be spending time in social networks?
- Will ABPI guidance stifle the benefits of Web 2.0 for the industry?