The Future of Digital Healthcare: The Intersection of Pharma, Physicians, Social Media, UX Design and Process

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Heather Snow — 3 Comments

Last week I attended two panels on healthcare and social media – BDI’s Healthcare Social Communications Leadership Forum and a NY Social Media Week panel, Navigating Social Media & New Technology in Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Industries. Much of the discussion – in both panels – had to do with the need for community among patients, and the role pharma brands can play in helping to facilitate this; the nuances of content (tone and tenor; separating gems from garbage; processes to distribute from internal out); as well as a visceral chafing among those that are already embracing social media against any references to a campaign mindset.

The latter came up in discussions of both channels and ROI: The dominant POV among the BDI panel was that social media should be embraced at a fundamental level and insisting upon ROI as you would a traditional marketing campaign misses the point. That said, Marc Monseau of Johnson & Johnson did emphasize the point that he couldn’t have achieved any of what he’s implemented at J&J without strong executive support. Which is to say, the most exemplary social media leaders in the healthcare space are focusing their education and evangelizing efforts on hitting the right nuance, versus justifying the fundamental value.

Some of the key themes in more detail:

Social media requires processes. Marc Monseau of Johnson & Johnson spoke at length about this – internal evangelizing, gaining executive support and creating clear protocols around who and what can go out via social media. Social media is low cost of entry, but highly resource-intensive. However, many companies likely already have mechanisms in place (both traditional PR spokesperson processes as well as content development), in which case it’s just a matter of refocusing them. Michael Fleming of GlaxoSmithKline also touched on the need to transform internal processes: if you can’t fluidly share information internally, you’re disadvantaged against individuals outside the organization who operate at a different pace.

Social media is a mindset, not a campaign. When asked to define social media, the overall consensus of the panel was that social media is not about the technology or the tools, but a mindset of engagement and interaction. Many argued that the persistent question of ROI missed the point – that social media should be seen as a fundamental part of business operations, like a call center, versus a campaign.

Content is context. Content is king, but it’s the context within which it’s delivered that is paramount in this space. Patients aren’t suffering for lack of content – when they search for information online the problem isn’t that they can’t find it, the problem is not knowing what they can trust. Separating the “gems from the garbage,” as one of the panelists put it. (Along those lines, an interesting tool that came up in discussion is Pixels & Pills’ Health Tweeder – a visualization tool to give a perspective of the health-related issues on Twitter that most concern people.)

One big opportunity for pharma brands is to help by facilitating relationships between patients, creating structures for patient communities. The other opportunity gets back to processes; as Fleming pointed out, pharma brands have a tremendous depth of knowledge and relationships, but currently don’t have mechanisms in place to distribute that knowledge to the external world – not proprietary info, but info that would help patients make decisions toward living better lives. Given the changing landscape in which traditional marketing messages aren’t resonating, this is a huge opportunity for pharma to shift into a new role. Again, it means shifting out of a campaign mentality, and treating social media as more of a fundamental business operation.

Think physicians and HCPs aren’t interested in digital tools? Think again. Some stats: 60% of physicians either are currently using social media or want to be; 65% of physicians have smartphones; 9 out of 10 physicians say the Internet is a critical tool to their practice. Lance Hill of Within3 pointed out that, contrary to the perception that physicians don’t have time for social networking, physicians are very heavy offline networkers. So the social media platforms that are most successful at engaging physicians tend to be those that marry offline with online and include task-based tools. 

UX design and cost are key barriers to adoption of digitized healthcare. Beyond social networking is the broader issue of digitizing healthcare practices – and the extent to which the currently available tools are help or hindrance to the practice of medicine. Under a provision of the stimulus bill signed into law last year, physicians must adopt use of electronic health records (EHR) and comply with standards of “meaningful use” (which have yet to be defined). Jay Parkinson, MD and founder of healthcare-focused design firm The Future Well, noted that the barriers to adoption of these tools are twofold: cost and usability. The existing tools require physicians to make an upfront investment of $45,000 for a system with a clunky interface that works like Windows 95; this is not an incentive when the competition is paper – which is in fact very efficient. The current systems are designed to capture volumes of data for courts and billing systems. Which is to say, not designed for the user – physicians, who have no interest in mining data. Doctors are not slow adopters; they will do anything that has potential to make them more money. But the current electronic systems don’t make them more money, they cost them money.