Guidance is no barrier to engaging on Twitter - Five simple, compliant tactics for European pharma marketers to consider

1. Listen

Listening is the starting point when thinking about engagement opportunities on Twitter. Using the many listening platforms available (they vary from free and small monthly fees to enterprise licences), one can quickly set up profiles around the topics which are important to you. For example, if you are interested in listening to what your customers are saying about your disease state or brand, you’ll create a stream of data to sort through to help build a picture of what topics are important to them, from an unbranded and branded standpoint.

And your customers are definitely talking about your disease area and brand, whether you are listening to them or not. From rare diseases to common ailments, there is a good chance that your customers are talking. One note: I would recommend knowing your adverse event reporting procedure (or make sure your digital agency is trained on your policy) to ensure you are following your established protocol for reporting appropriate content.

2. Identify and engage community leaders

Once you start listening, you’ll begin to see trends in who is speaking, sharing and engaging the most. Active users are most likely the ‘leaders’ of the community, regularly posting to, and engaging with, the same customers you spend your marketing budgets to build relationships with.

This presents a great opportunity to start a dialogue with these important community influencers. If you can, you should go to the same conferences they are attending and listen to what they have to say. Their presentations and points of view are critical to the path of better understanding what your communities are looking for. Invite them to have a coffee at the local café and continue to listen. You may not like what they have to say all the time, but it’s important to build a long term relationship, which will ultimately benefit the community by helping to fill in gaps with the support and content you are supplying on behalf of your company.

3. ‘Hashtag customer service’

Once you have established a listening programme on Twitter, a natural next step is to work on increasing the reach of the services you already provide. Let’s say you have a service on your disease education website where members of the public can post a question that is not product related and receive a response via email.

What if you extended this service to Twitter via a hashtag? All a Twitter user has to do is place the hashtag in their message (example: #askPHARMA) and your Twitter listening platform will pick up on the hashtag request and notify the appropriate team member (maybe even your medical information call centre), giving your team the immediate opportunity to send a response, providing the same level of customer service that most customers expect outside pharma.

4. Sponsored tweet

There is a simple approach to getting your message out to your audiences without being directly involved in the Twitter community. Pharma companies have started to use sponsored tweets. This is the ability to use an established Twitter account to deliver a message to an audience. For example, a pharma company could pay any Twitter influencer to tweet a message about a particular healthcare-related topic to its followers.

By sponsoring the Tweet, pharma companies expand the reach of that message beyond their community of followers and reach an even larger audience of prospects and customers. This also can help link the company to a respected individual or corporation. In fact, CVS just sponsored the hashtag #onegoodreason to promote its new no-tobacco policy to as wide an audience as possible. Without choosing to sponsor the hashtag, #onegoodreason would only be visible to its current Twitter followers.

5. Build an FDA-approved Tweet

As you build your community and determine content to engage your audience, it’s important to be mindful of the new FDA regulations, which were designed to promote health literacy and accuracy. This can be challenging with a 140-character limit, but if you follow these steps, you will be tweeting FDA approved messages in no time.

1. Include the benefit information


2. Communicate at a minimum the most serious risk, along with a direct hyperlink to a more complete discussion of risk information


3. Include the full FDA-approved product name.

Below is an example that follows these steps and was provided by the FDA:

NoFocus (rememberine HCl) for mild to moderate memory loss; may cause seizures in patients with a seizure disorder www.nofocus.com/risk [134/140]

Consider starting with basic steps to develop a social approach to Twitter – small steps can help you move forward in your social engagement journey.

Three steps for building an FDA-approved tweet

Include the benefit information
Communicate at a minimum the most serious risk, along with direct hyperlink to a more complete discussion of risk information
Include the full FDA-approved product name

 

 

This post is provided by Cadient for information purposes only and is not intended and should not be construed as regulatory or legal advice.

Source PMLive http://www.pmlive.com/blogs/smart_thinking/archive/2014/october/guidance_is_no_barrier_to_engaging_on_twitter

Guidance is no barrier to engaging on Twitter - Five simple, compliant tactics for European pharma marketers to consider

Cancer survival rates 'continue to improve'

Prostate cancer survival rates are expected to improve for patients diagnosed in 2013

Most people diagnosed with cancer in England in recent years are surviving for longer, according to the latest statistics.

Eighty per cent of those with breast, prostate and skin cancer are living for five years after diagnosis. The figure is 90% for testicular cancer.

Recently diagnosed prostate cancer patients will see a large improvement in their hopes of survival.

The figures are published by the Office for National Statistics.

The ONS report estimated the chances of people surviving for one year and for five years after being diagnosed with cancer in England.

The report looked at survival rates for 24 different common cancers diagnosed between 2008 and 2013.

It found survival improving for the majority of cancers, with survival generally higher in women.

Survival boost

For people with cancers diagnosed in 2013, the greatest improvement in survival chances will be in men with prostate cancer – from 83.6% to 87.6%.

High survival rates for prostate cancer and breast cancer are thought to be due to the increasing number of men and women getting their cancer diagnosed and treated at an early stage.

Other lesser-known cancers also showed promising improvements in the chances of survival.

For women with myeloma, or cancer of the white blood cells, there was a rise in five-year survival from 41.6% for those diagnosed in 2007-2011 to 46.2% for diagnosis between 2008 and 2012.

There were also large increases in survival chances for men with myeloma and men with leukaemia.

While some cancers have a good prognosis, others “remain extremely poor”, the ONS report says.

Five-year survival estimates for cancers of the brain, lung, liver, pancreas and stomach are all below 19% for men and 22% for women.

Pancreatic cancer for both men and women has a survival rate of just 5.4% – the lowest in both sexes.

‘Greater awareness’

Nick Ormiston-Smith, head of statistical information at Cancer Research UK, said more people were surviving cancer then ever before “thanks to better treatments, earlier diagnosis and greater awareness”.

“But the story’s not so positive for all types of cancer,” he said.

“Lung, pancreatic, oesophageal cancer and brain tumours still have relatively low survival rates, partly because they tend to be diagnosed at a later stage when they’re much harder to treat.”

He added: “We’re working to beat all cancers sooner, increasing our research into cancers with lower survival rates and boosting our investment to help diagnose cancer earlier – accelerating progress to save more lives.”

Source BBC News/Health http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29832237

Cancer survival rates 'continue to improve'

Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector

Google hopes to develop a wristband that would carry out non-invasive blood tests

Google is aiming to diagnose cancers, impending heart attacks or strokes and other diseases, at a much earlier stage than is currently possible.

The company is working on technology that combines disease-detecting nanoparticles, which would enter a patient’s bloodstream via a swallowed pill, with a wrist-worn sensor.

The idea is to identify slight changes in the person’s biochemistry that could act as an early warning system.

The work is still at an early stage.

Early diagnosis is the key to treating disease. Many cancers, such as pancreatic, are detected only after they have become untreatable and fatal.

There are marked differences between cancerous and healthy tissues.

Google’s ambition is to constantly monitor the blood for the unique traces of cancer, allowing diagnosis long before any physical symptoms appear.

The project is being conducted by the search company’s research unit, Google X, which is dedicated to investigating potentially revolutionary innovations.

Mr Conrad, seen on the left, joined Google X as head of Life Sciences in 2013

It marks the firm’s latest shift into the medical sector following its work on glucose-measuring contact lenses for patients with diabetes and the acquisition of a start-up that developed a spoon to counteract the tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease.

Google has also bought stakes in Calico, an anti-ageing research company, and 23andMe, which offers personal genetic-testing kits.

Nanoparticles

The diagnostic project is being led by Dr Andrew Conrad, a molecular biologist who previously developed a cheap HIV test that has become widely used.

“What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative,” he told the BBC.

Doctor-patient relationships are pretty privileged and would not involve Google in any way”

Dr Andrew Conrad Google X

“Nanoparticles… give you the ability to explore the body at a molecular and cellular level.”

Google is designing a suite of nanoparticles which are intended to match markers for different conditions.

They could be tailored to stick to a cancerous cell or a fragment of cancerous DNA.

Or they could find evidence of fatty plaques about to break free from the lining of blood vessels. These can cause a heart attack or stroke if they stop the flow of blood.

Another set would constantly monitor chemicals in the blood.

High levels of potassium are linked to kidney disease. Google believes it will be possible to construct porous nanoparticles that alter colour as potassium passes through.

“Then [you can] recall those nanoparticles to a single location – because they are magnetic – and that location is the superficial vasculature of the wrist, [where] you can ask them what they saw,” said Dr Conrad.

Unattached nanoparticles would move differently in a magnetic field from those clumped around a cancer cell.

In theory, software could then provide a diagnosis by studying their movements.

As part of the project, the researchers have also explored ways of using magnetism to concentrate the nanoparticles temporarily in a single area.

The tech company’s ambition is ultimately to create a wristband that would take readings of the nanoparticles via light and radio waves one or more times a day.

Prof Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, told the BBC News website: “In principle this is great. Any newcomers with new ideas are welcome in the field.

“There is an urgent need for this. If we can detect cancer or other diseases earlier, then we can intervene with either lifestyle changes or treatment.

“How much of this proposal is dream versus reality is impossible to tell because it is a fascinating concept that now needs to be converted to practice.”

His team at the institute is investigating cancer cells and cancer DNA in the blood as new methods of diagnosis and planning treatment.

He did warn Google that a diagnosis could increase anxiety and lead to unnecessary treatment, so there needed to be “very careful and rigorous analysis” before this type of blood monitoring could be used widely.

The scheme is being made public because Google is now seeking to establish partnerships.

But Dr Conrad sought to play down the idea that his firm wanted to run a search tool for the human body, alongside the one it already offers for the internet.

“We are the inventors of the technology but we have no intentions of commercialising it or monetising it in that way,” he said.

“We will license it out and the partners will take it forward to doctors and patients.

“These are not consumer devices. They are prescriptive medical devices, and you know that doctor-patient relationships are pretty privileged and would not involve Google in any way.”

Analysis: James Gallagher, health editor

From searching the internet to searching your blood, Google certainly has high ambitions. But is it feasible?

The basic principles are sound and mirror the work already taking place around the world.

Many research groups are looking at bits of cancer floating in the blood as a better way of diagnosing the disease and also to assess which tumours are more aggressive.

But Google will have to address concerns around “false positives”, when healthy people are told they are ill.

These have plagued the PSA test for prostate cancer, as PSA levels can soar even when cancer is absent.

There is also the issue of “over-diagnosis”. Who needs treating even if a condition is discovered?

There is continuing controversy around breast cancer screening: for every life saved, three women have invasive treatment for a cancer that would never have proved fatal.

Screening the body for disease is littered with dangers, and if it is not done carefully, it could make hypochondriacs out of all of us.

Big risk?

The nanoparticle project is the latest so-called “moonshot” to originate from Google X.

Other schemes include the firm’s driverless car effort and Project Loon, an attempt to provide internet access to remote areas via a network of high-altitude weather balloons.

While such ideas have the potential to make money, there is also a high risk of failure, and Google X acknowledges that several of its ideas have been ditched before being made public.

One analyst commented that its parent was in a rare position to make such investments.

“Under normal circumstances this is the kind of thing that would worry investors because such projects are too long-term and the miss rate is too high,” said Cyrus Mewawalla, from CM Research.

“But because Google’s core search business is currently so strong, shareholders are not worried at the moment and are allowing the firm to take a gamble.”

Analysis: Leo Kelion, technology desk editor

Google’s diagnostic project may never come to fruition, but its significance lies in the fact it represents part of a wider push by the firm into health tech.

Bearing in mind this is already a crowded sector, it begs the question: why?

The search firm denies that it wants to run its own diagnosis service, with all the privacy headaches that would entail, but the patents it creates along the way could prove lucrative.

No doubt the fact that co-founder and Google X chief Sergey Brin has been told that a gene mutation has increased his likelihood of contracting Parkinson’s has also focused efforts.

And the company clearly believes its expertise in “big data” analysis and its freedom to focus on giant leaps forward, rather than incremental steps, plays to its advantages.

It’s worth remembering that another much hyped health idea, Google Flu Trends – which aimed to predict the spread of the virus based on internet searches – has been dubbed a failure by some after researchers said it had overestimated the number of cases in 100 out of 108 weeks.

And US health watchdogs banned Google-backed 23andme from selling its genetic screening kits last year.

On the other hand, Google’s “smart lens” for diabetics shows promise, with Swiss firm Novartis stepping up to license the technology in July.

And the forthcoming Android Fit platform, designed to harness data from other apps and wearables, has a good chance of success given the huge number of people using the operating system.

Source BBC News/Health http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29802581

By Leo Kelion & James Gallagher Technology and health desk editors

Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector

EFPIA promotes pharma's contribution to Europe

Launches Pharmafigures website to detail industry investment

EFPIA has launched a new online initiative to promote pharma’s contribution to Europe.

The European trade body’s new pharmafigures.eu website details industry investment in R&D, levels of employment it brings and its contribution to the trade balance in 32 European countries.

The resource, which went online in the weeks before the line-up of Jean-Claude Juncker’s new European Commission was confirmed, also gives a regional breakdown of some of the figures for Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

Source PMLive http://www.pmlive.com/blogs/digital_intelligence/archive/2014/october/efpia_promotes_pharmas_contribution_to_europe

EFPIA promotes pharma's contribution to Europe

EC: medicines to remain part of health directorate

Juncker U-turns on decision to move pharma oversight to enterprise and industry

New president of the European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker has backtracked on a much-criticised decision to move control of pharmaceuticals and medical devices to the enterprise and industry directorate.

Instead medicines will remain under control of the Directorate General for Health and Consumers, whose Commissioner is now Vytenis Andriukaitis after the recent reshuffle of EC ministers.

“Responsibility for medicines and pharmaceutical products will stay with the Directorate-General for Health because I agree with you that medicines are not goods like any other,” said Juncker in a speech before the European Parliament to announce his presidency.

“The relevant policy will be developed jointly by Vytenis Andriukaitis and by Elżbieta Bieńkowska [Directorate-General for the Internal Market and Industry], who showed her incredible talents in her hearing.”

The announcement was welcomed by several healthcare organisations who had strongly criticised the original decision to move the control of medicines to the industry directorate as a retrograde step that would damage the EC’s ability to handle major health crises and to keep patients at the heart of policy decisions.

Twenty-six major healthcare bodies in Europe, including the European Public Health Alliance and the UK’s Royal College of Nurses, issued a joint press release welcoming the U-turn.

“With this new perspective, Mr Juncker has demonstrated that medicines are not an ordinary internal market good and that pharmaceutical policy is crucial to the sustainability of health systems; not solely an instrument for promoting economic growth,” said the partners.

“Dr Vytenis Andriukaitis will now have the tools to fulfil his mandate to harmonise pharmaceutical governance within the EU and facilitate emergency preparedness; the very reasons that in 2009 led the European Commission to move responsibility for medicines and medical devices into the hands of the health Commissioner.”

Health Action International (HAI) Europe – a network working to improve access to essential medicines – also hailed the decision, although there were still concerns about the possibility of an expanded role for the Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry in the development of medicines policy.

HAI Europe said it “calls upon the new EU health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, to use all available means to ensure that public health is not compromised by private sector interests”.

Source PMLive http://www.pmlive.com/pharma_news/ec_medicines_to_remain_part_of_health_directorate_609283

EC: medicines to remain part of health directorate

Facebook: mobile is not a technology, it's a consumer behaviour

Social network gives pharma marketers attending ThinkDigital some tips

Mobile is not a technology, it’s a consumer behavior – that was one of the messages from Facebook to the pharma marketers present at the recent ThinkDigital event.

The social network told the audience at the Digitas Health Lifebrands event in London last month to look at the wider trends that technological advances were enabling.

“You shouldn’t be talking about mobile, you should be talking about mobility,” explained Nick Pestell, agency partner, global marketing solutions at Facebook.

“The best example of this is that if you were to spend £100 on Facebook, then £73 of that would end up on a mobile device – that’s not just Facebook pushing it out to mobile devices, it’s because that is where the consumers are.”

It is also a trend, Pestell told ThinkDigital, that applies to all demographics. “We’re starting to see the [number of] people who exclusively access Facebook on a mobile device continue to rise.

“It’s now about 40%, up from 35% a year ago, and in certain demographics it is as high as 85%. The data that is being generated from all of this activity – especially on the smartphone level – has increased exponentially.”

June Dawson, managing director of Digitas Health LifeBrands, said: “Customers are driving much of the demand for mHealth technologies and applications. Mobile apps are helping to improve overall consumer engagement in health care by simplifying the access and the flow of information; lowering costs through better decision-making, fewer in-person visits, and greater adherence to treatment plans; and improving satisfaction with the service experience.

“Facebook gave us an Insight into health care consumers’ behaviours and attitudes at ThinkDigital14 – this is critical information in an environment where health care is moving rapidly towards patient-centered care where individuals ARE active participants in managing in their own health care.”

A growing number of pharmaceutical companies use Facebook, which has built a global user base of 1.2 billion people in its first ten years, and the social network’s Pestell offered a few tips on how to do so more effectively.

• Think ‘stories’ not ‘facts’: consumers, in healthcare as elsewhere, engage emotionally through stories rather than dry facts


• Develop ‘atomised’ content: Facebook’s users generally don’t visit every day, so you need a strategy that enables them to dip in and out of your posts – so that whenever they visit they can still know what’s going on


• Stories need themes: Create ‘ownable’, repeatable things that users can engage with, Pestell advised. Acknowledging it was not a healthcare example, he highlighted McDonald’s rich, engaging, real-time video-led Facebook campaign that was developed for this year’s football World Cup in Brazil


• Audience pockets and targeting: Make data – either your own or that provided by companies like Acxiom and Datalogics – work for you by unearthing either a new audience or an existing customer base.

Pestell concluded by revealing that the single biggest question asked of Facebook is ‘what is good creative on Facebook?’.

“The easiest answer that,” he said, “ is that good creative is just good creative – it shouldn’t be adapted for Facebook – and it definitely does not need to be a cat or a dog or something cute.”

Source PMLive http://www.pmlive.com/blogs/digital_intelligence/archive/2014/october/facebook_mobile_is_not_a_technology,_its_a_consumer_behaviour

Facebook: mobile is not a technology, it's a consumer behaviour

NHS needs extra cash and overhaul, say health bosses

By Nick Triggle Health correspondent, BBC News

The plan wants more done to reduce obesity, smoking and drinking rates

Drastic changes to services and extra money is needed if the NHS in England is not to suffer, health bosses say.

A five-year plan for the NHS – unveiled by six national bodies – once again highlighted an annual £30bn shortfall would open up in the next Parliament.

It said changes, such as GP practices offering hospital services, would help to plug a large chunk of the gap.

But health chiefs said the NHS would still need above inflation rises of 1.5% over the coming years.

That works out at an extra £8bn a year above inflation by 2020.

The current budget stands at £100bn a year, but all the political parties have already started talking about what they would do in the next Parliament.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said difficult decisions needed to be taken, but added the Conservatives were committed to “protecting and increasing” funding in real terms.

“A strong NHS needs a strong economy, then it is possible to increase spending this report calls for.”

 

£100bn

NHS England budget for 2014-15

£30bn

Shortfall predicted by 2020

• That could fund 100 hospitals


• New ways of working could save £22bn


• But NHS still needs an extra £8bn

Source: NHS England

Thinkstock

Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said some of the proposals were ideas Labour had already suggested.

“We’ve have found an extra £2.5bn for the NHS, we’ve said that the NHS will be our priority in the next Parliament, and alongside that, we’re saying that the time has come to bring social care into the NHS.”

The Liberal Democrats have said they will make sure the budget rises in line with inflation.

The plan – called the NHS Forward View – also said the future of the health service depended on it becoming more efficient.

To achieve this, it called for a rethink about the way services were delivered.

It put forward a range of models – although stressed it was up to each local area to decide which ones to adopt.

These include:

• Large GP practices to employ hospital doctors to provide extra services, including diagnostics, chemotherapy and hospital outpatient appointments


• In areas where GP services are under strain, hospitals could be encouraged to open their own surgeries


• Smaller hospitals to work as part of larger chain, sharing back-office and management services


• Larger hospitals to open franchises at smaller sites, as Moorfields Eye Hospital has done in London


• Hospitals to provide care direct to care homes to prevent emergency admissions


• Volunteers could be encouraged to get more involved, by offering council-tax discounts

Many of these measures are designed to curb the rise in hospital admissions and impact of the ageing population – the source of most pressure in the health service.

Case study: Working with care homes

Nurses and doctors from Airedale Hospital in West Yorkshire have set up video link-ups with local care homes.

It allows consultations to take place with residents on everything from cuts and bumps to diabetes management.

Emergency admissions from these homes have reduced by 35% and A&E attendances by 53%.

But the report – produced by NHS England, Public Health England, the regulator Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority, Care Quality Commission and Health Education England – also said more needed to be done to reduce obesity, smoking and drinking rates.

It suggested employers should be encouraged to incentivise their staff to become healthier by taking steps such as offering them shopping vouchers for healthy behaviour.

Meanwhile, councils could play their part by using their powers in areas such as planning and licensing to limit the opening of junk food outlets and the sale of cheap high-strength alcohol.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, the lead body for Forward View, said the NHS was at a “crossroads”.

NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens: NHS “must fundamentally change”

“It is perfectly possible to improve and sustain the NHS over the next five years in a way that the public and patients want. But the NHS needs to change substantially.”

He said if the health service did not improve, the “consequences for patients will be severe” in terms of what could be done to ensure patients received the best care in areas such as cancer and heart disease.

But he added there was no reason why a tax-funded NHS would not continue if the plans outlined were followed.

‘Close the gap’

Health minister Norman Lamb welcomed the report, saying it was “really imaginative thinking”.

“I think this combined case of more investment but also change… is absolutely the right message.”

The Liberal Democrat minister said his party wanted to “reopen” spending plans for 2015/16, saying “the NHS needs more money next year”. He said it would be “our top priority” for the Autumn Statement.

Case study: The GP super-practice

Whitstable Medical Practice, in Kent, is one of the new super-practices that are being developed. It offers the traditional GP services alongside a host of services more associated with hospitals.

It operates out of three sites and employs nearly 150 staff, providing care for 34,000 people.

It runs maternity services, a minor injury unit with X-ray facilities and dedicated diabetes, heart disease and asthma clinics as well as diagnostics and minor surgery.

Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the Nuffield Trust think tank, said: “This report makes crystal clear that the NHS cannot continue with ‘business as usual’ if it is to meet the needs of a diverse and ageing population.”

Royal College of Nursing general secretary Peter Carter called the report “rigorous and realistic”.

Source BBC News/Health http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29726934

NHS needs extra cash and overhaul, say health bosses