Social Media | Pharma Strategy Blog

900 blog posts and counting!

By MaverickNY on July 25, 2011

Just noticed in the dashboard that this is my 900th post here on Pharma Strategy Blog – I can’t quite believe it has been that many over the last couple of years! When I first started out blogging in 2006, it was hard to imagine writing 100 posts, never mind nearly a thousand. The style has changed over time too, from discussion of news to more in-depth pieces on the science behind cancer and interviews with experts in the field.

One of the things I’ve most enjoyed from the process has been the interactions with readers both here on the blog itself and on online platforms such as Twitter and meeting quite a few people in real life either at medical conferences or while on the road passing through their region. The curiousity for knowledge and shared learning has been the most fun part of the journey. Long may it continue.

At the current rate of writing (20 posts a month), the magical 1000th post should arrive in time for the Holidays by the year end – a nice way to finish off 2011 in style.

In the meantime, the science and drug development insights will continue apace, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading, commenting and the many email conversations that follow posts.

{Update: I recorded a quick video about why blog about science and cancer research – check it out!}

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AACR has free journal access online until end of August

By MaverickNY on July 14, 2011

Gotta love Twitter for finding useful and helpful things that make a difference to scientific research… Last night I saw a tweet from the delightful Tara Yates of AACR:

Yes please!

Whether you are a subscriber or interested in the offer like I was, you can download the AACR app on iTunes.

I couldn’t resist – did it immediately on my iPad and discovered the AACR app was beautiful – well designed UI, nicely integrated and intuitive features, easy to use. The sharp interface looks like this:

You can scroll through, choose a journal, read Online first, Current Issue or the previous three issues. Very neat. You can also favourite articles for later reading:

Note the “Download the PDF” button at the top right. This is where the app really shines. In the iPad, you can download the PDF and save it to any readers you have such as iBooks, Goodreads, Stanza or whatever you have installed. The app let’s you choose your preferred option. I like iBooks and save PDFs to there for easy reading while travelling or even while working or writing blog posts.

The other option I use is to save PDFs to Evernote as well. The reason for this is that the readers all search on title alone, whereas Evernote is OCR based and will find words in an article, not just the title. This is very handy if you need to find something quickly and only have a vague idea of what you remember. The other day I needed an article on VEGF biomarkers but only remembered vaguely reading it was about ‘myeloid’ factors and couldn’t remember the journal, authors, the institution, the drug or anything else other than VEGF and myeloid. Evernote found it in seconds after searching for ‘myeloid’. Very cool.

Evernote also syncs seamlessly across my iPad, iPhone, laptop and Desktop computers making it the ultimate database and search tool for scientific data and papers. It has certainly saved my bacon more than a few times when doing consulting projects!

I highly recommend this app from AACR – even if you’re not a member, it’s well worth checking out the free access offer and reading a lot of high quality articles on a range of topics from basic and translational research, to biomarkers, clinical research and even cancer prevention. It’s really very easy to get engrossed reading the interesting journal articles on a iPad and forgetting to download or save them… I’m going to be very sad when the free trial runs out next month 🙁

Nice job, AACR!

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Using social media to improve awareness of clinical trials in rare lymphomas

By MaverickNY on July 8, 2011

Slowly but surely, we are seeing more use of social media in one area where I really think it can help a lot – clinical trials.

Regular readers will know of my passion for use of biomarkers in studies to ensure that the patients most likely to respond and therefore benefit will get treatment, thereby sparing those unlikely to respond of the debilitating systemic side effects. This also helps to reduce false hope and raise more realistic expectations.

I was therefore delighted to see a new video from the folks at MD Anderson Cancer Center where Dr Anas Younes, a lymphoma expert, is explaining about the new trials they have open in a rare form of lymphoma, Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma (PTCL), with some new agents in development.

The groups stated mission is abundantly clear and admirable:

“Our mission is to improve the cure rate of patients with PTCL and reduce treatment-related toxicity by developing novel targeted therapy using rationally designed small molecules, antibodies and combination regimens of biologic agents.”

Check out the short video below – if you can’t see it, you can click this link to take you directly to it:

PTCL is very rare indeed, but…

It is good to see companies invest in clinical trials to continue to improve outcomes
Social media sharing through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs is a great way to aid awareness of clinical trials for those are suffering
More awareness will hopefully lead to faster enrolment and earlier readouts that can be publicly shared with all
Dr Younes is a fellow believer in targeted agents in a targeted fashion based on the underlying biology of the disease. Love this – using targeted agents in an untargeted fashion is both silly and a waste of time/research dollars
Academia is probably the ideal way to provide this sort of education – are you more likely to believe or be persuaded by a passionate medical specialist from a top cancer center or a pharma company advertising clinical trials?

There has been some excellent research from Pew Internet recently that showed, as Susannah Fox summarised for me via Twitter:

“Most patients say professionals are more helpful than peers for diagnosis, Rx, treatments.”

She has also published another in-depth report that looked at Peer-To-Peer healthcare. I particularly liked the aims:

“This report shows how people’s networks are expanding to include online peers, particularly in the crucible of rare disease.”

Those online peers could be connections from all walks of life, who like me, like to share fascinating stuff from reputable sources such as Pew Internet, Manhattan Research and top cancer centers such as MD Anderson. The beauty of social media is that we can all share information and help improve medical education and awareness across a broad church. As Thomas Friedman said, the world is indeed getting flatter.

For those of you who know someone who has been diagnosed with PTCL or other rare lymphomas and is in need of treatment, do share Dr Younes’ video with them – they may be able to help.

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Self-Educated Patients and The Future of Cancer Care

By MaverickNY on July 5, 2011

Love this video from TEDxOverlake, where Dr Jack West (Swedish) describes what he is doing with his excellent forum and site, the Global Resource for Advancing Cancer Education (GRACE). Currently, the main focus is on his specialty, Lung Cancer, but more tumour types are planned in the near future.

Jack talks about how physician led sites can actively and effectively reach out in a many-to-many fashion to improve education and learning, rather than in the traditional one-to-one fashion seen in a consultation.

He uses a great example of how a young patient with lung cancer was empowered to seek out better care for his condition and ended up in the crizotinib trial for ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer…

Check it out – it’s a compelling and very powerful story:

If you can’t see the video in your email subscription, you can find it here.

Disclosure: I’m an unpaid member of the GRACE Advisory Board (so of course, I will be biased 😉

Should Pharma and Biotech be engaging in social media?

By MaverickNY on July 1, 2011

Today several people have reminded me that it’s Canada Day and also the Independence Day weekend in the US. Although I’m British and celebrate neither, there will be a short hiatus from blogging in honour of my Canuck and American friends.

We’ll be working unfortunately, such is the life as a consultant, with deadlines galore due next week!

For those of you anxious not to miss anything hot on the social media front, check out this article from BioWorld on Biotechs and Social Media, kindly sent in by Drs Brian Orelli and Al Lalani.

Here’s an interesting quote from the research:

In an informal BioWorld Today survey, more than 44 percent (95) of the 215 respondents said their firms are not engaging in social media. The No. 1 reason, listed by 42 percent, was that social media “was not the place for us.”

I can understand that approach completely – social media is about engagement and sharing; dealing with the challenges of unhappy patients complaining publicly online via social media puts Pharma in an awkward spot regarding how to handle issues that may arise:

The biggest concern the companies had with social media was how to balance the risks and benefits. That balance was cited by nearly half the respondents. Other top concerns were dealing with third-party comments and opening themselves to liability.

The short article is well worth reading. It reminds me of the dilemma a client recently expressed:

“Do we continue to focus strategically on research & development, trying to find cures for cancer, or do we allow ourselves to be distracted by other issues like shiny new tools and tactics? I only have so much time in a day.”

Fair point indeed and a dilemma that many of you will already be discussing offline. There is no right or wrong answer – you can only do the best you can with the time and resources you have available.

In the meantime, Pharma Strategy Blog will resume as usual on Tuesday.

Happy Holidays to all!

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Biotechnology, Genomics and Personalized Medicine

By MaverickNY on June 29, 2011

Ruby (@divabiotech) talking at Singularity U

My friend Ruby Gadelrab is the very dynamic and vivacious Head of Marketing and Clinical Development for International Markets at Affymetrix.

She was recently invited to give a talk at the prestigious Singularity University meeting.

I was thrilled to see that Ruby has generously posted her talk online on her blog, Diva Biotech, which I’m a big fan of, and check out regularly in my RSS feeds. The excellent presentation well worth reading if you want to come up to speed on the basics, as well as see her personal view on where the field is going in the near future.

I learned a lot from her synopsis and thought it was a nice thing to share here with PSB readers who may be interested in the topic, as this is a subject that will be very much to the fore in the next 5-10 years.

You can read all about it and download Ruby’s slides on Biotechnology, Genomics and Personalized Medicine.

Check it out!

Aggregating the ASCO 2011 tweets

By MaverickNY on June 3, 2011

It’s that time of year again and boy, does the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) come round all too quickly! It’s almost like Battime, Batplace…

As usual, I’ll be aggregating the conference tweets using the official #asco11 hashtag, so that all of you not going to the event can follow along remotely – do feel free to join in the conversation and ask questions or post comments using #asco11 on Twitter:

This widget will run for the duration of ASCO until close of play on Wednesday, so do check back regularly for new tweets and conversation!

Next Thursday, I’ll be at the European Hematology Association (EHA) meeting in London, so a new tweet aggregator will be added then.

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Using Flipboard to keep up with science and cancer research

By MaverickNY on May 24, 2011

A lot of people have asked me over the last year how I keep up with so much information in cancer research. I thought it would be a nice idea to illustrate one way I consume information on a daily basis.

Since getting an iPad2, my life has changed for the better. There are a number of really useful apps that let you browse information in a more user-friendly way. Four of these include:

Flipboard
Zite
Reeder
Feedly

After trying them all over time, I found that for me, the one that resonated most for me was Flipboard.

What you get starts out like this:

Oh dear, that wasn’t welcome news this morning, bearing in mind I’m flying to ASCO in Chicago and then to London for the European Hematology Association meeting back to back in a few weeks. The return of #ashcloud tweets on Twitter looks imminent!

Here’s how Flipboard works…

Select your Twitter lists
Other people’s curated Twitter lists you follow
RSS feeds for blogs, journals, pubmed searches, etc

And the inside of the magazine becomes organised into recognisable categories:

You can then flip through the categories and see what’s interesting to you for further reading. It also enables you to see broad trends much more easily.

Here’s an example from my journal and Pubmed feeds, since I have searches for all the key pathways that are associated with cancer. Some are more active than others, but over time, you get a mix of new articles whenever you browse them.

This is much easier to browse than reading lists and lists of things in Google Reader – Flipboard brings them life:

Now you can sort the chaff from the wheat – we know that the BRAF V600E mutation is important in melanoma, but not colon cancer for example, but I sure didn’t know it might have a role to play in thyroid cancer!

Reading the abstracts this way is much more impactful and user-friendly.

Another thing that is useful is browsing one’s Twitter lists on topics such as Cancer, Medicine etc. In the latter, I spotted an interesting tweet about how an app could be used to record your ECG on an iPhone – how cool is that?

You can see the play button for the video on the iPad (it obviously won’t work on the photo though, in case you just clicked on it ;)) – you just click and listen while travelling or sitting in the comfort of your office.

The way technology has evolved over the last couple of years is simply amazing, but best of all, it makes processing information you have selected as relevant to your personal interests much more user-friendly and digestible.

That’s a big win for busy people on the go!

What apps do you like? Do share them in the comments below.

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How AUA have embraced social media in 2011

By MaverickNY on May 16, 2011

One of the recent trends at cancer conferences that I have noticed has been the creative use of social media by some cancer and urology Society organizations such as AACR, ASCO, AUA and ASH to promote their events and communicate with attendees before, during and after conferences. It’s not all American organisations either, with some European societies also becoming increasingly digitally aware, including ESMO, EAU and EHA all gradually building an online presence beyond their websites.

With SoMe, we have also seen an uptick in digitally savvy attendees using tools such as Twitter to tweet snippets from different conference sessions, drive traffic to their posters, meet up with others at different sessions and generally engage in scientific or clinical discussions around various hot topics.

Last year, the American Urological Association (AUA) started nicely with baby steps, setting up Twitter and YouTube accounts and a fledgling Facebook page, although only the Twitter account was really active at the 2010 annual meeting.

Following on from that successful experiment, this year they are much more active on Twitter and Facebook, announcing events, press briefings, running competitions and responding promptly to attendees queries.

A bunch of us at a satellite society at the Grand Hyatt found ourselves without heat or wifi on Saturday, so we tweeted under the conference hashtag to alert the organisers over at the convention center. I personally was delighted that the temperature improved in the afternoon of the Society for Basic Urological Research (SBUR) meeting, as the frozen Tundra-temperatures shed an icy pall over the excellent morning presentations from Dr. Charles Sawyers and others. Tweeting polite feedback does bring results!

Here’s the AUA Facebook page, which is actively managed, with photos, news, links and other interesting snippets:

There are also light booths around the convention centre advertising the Facebook page:

Another first was a training course over the weekend for physicians on how to use social media to market their urology practices was held for interested attendees. I thought this was a great idea and this is one area I expect to see grow as more urologists get involved with social media and incorporate the tools into their business marketing – engagement with people and potential patients can pay off in the long run.

Eventually, I think we will see more social media develop for learning opportunities especially in the CME environment or incorporated into more skills training, for example, to YouTube videos to explain surgical techniques and aftercare for patients. The start is a good one, but we’re only just seeing the tip of the iceberg begin to emerge.

Meanwhile, thanks to Wendy and Dana at AUA for a job well done on social media at the 2011 annual meeting in DC!

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Mobile health and the impact for Pharma

By MaverickNY on May 11, 2011

“In God we trust, all others must bring data.”

W. Edwards Deming

The beauty of following many people on social media sites such as Twitter is that people in various communities, ie science, cancer, market research, PR and communications, etc all share links daily. Occasionally, one catches my eye and reveals a hidden gem.

This morning was one of those days.

Take a look at this quick but useful (12 pages) slide deck on mobile health from Susannah Fox of Pew Internet:

Fox Mobile Health 2011

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

Social media is changing the way we interact and do a lot of things

Mobile and access to wifi is very much part of facilitating that change. Go out on a busy street at lunchtime and notice how many people are using their iPhone, iPad or Android PDA to access data or do something. Wifi access is included in this category – can you remember the last time you connected your laptop or desktop to an ethernet cable – I can’t. Everything is now wireless, even printing.

The consequence of this trend is that many people are now searching for health information online, via their mobile or wifi (6 in 10 according to the Pew Research).

Does this trend have an impact on Pharma?

Absolutely it does. This social change actually has many useful implications for Pharma and their agencies:

Are your brand or unbranded sites optimised for mobile?
Are your sites Flash heavy?
Is it easy to access health or disease information you generate through apps?
Is your site optimised for languages such as Spanish?

It always amuses me (not) how many Agencies have flash heavy sites when a client calls and desires a recommendation for a new vendor, which actually happens quite often. PR and Communications agencies are notoriously bad at this. If I’m trying to send a link to your site to someone on an iPhone and they can’t read it, I’m not going to refer you. Fixing this glitch and dragging your agency into the digital age will improve your image enormously – image matters.

Imagine what the experience would be for patients trying to find out health information on the go and they can’t access anything because it’s coded in ugly Flash? They will quickly go elsewhere for health information.

Scaling a website from a desktop or laptop to a mobile device is very different, both in the look and feel. This blog, for example, looks very different on a mobile device than on a PC screen – check it out for yourselves. The optimisation makes it much easier to read a blog post.

If I have a horrid time trying to find the incredibly tiny Prescribing Information or Reimbursement link on your brand site on a laptop, it’s going to be very difficult for a patient or caregiver to find it on a mobile device. That’s something that is very easy to fix and will improve things for patients immediately.

Optimise it with big clickable, easy to see and read buttons! Make the text large, navigation and UI a breeze to read and use. Easy to use sites will ensure repeat visits, increased customer loyalty and sharing of the content. Hard to use sites will not.

The Pew Report highlighted two key trends in online health discussions that I think are really important to Pharma, which they defined as:

The Mobile difference
The Diagnosis difference

Where the Diagnosis difference is helping people find, read and share information about a disease or diagnosis. This could be a patient or caregiver, but interestingly, 1 in 4 adults use apps on their Smart phones.

WebMD is a still a main destination site for people seeking independent health information, but apps are becoming increasingly important. That one area where Pharma companies can make an impact in a thoughtful, rather than promotional way. My big assumption here though, is that patients themselves are consulted for ideas through focus groups and involved in the development of tools for monitoring their condition that are useful to them.

The end result? People are more likely to share links or apps virally and blog about them to others, thereby helping to increase awareness, adoption and hopefully, longevity if the site or app is really useful and fills an unmet need.

Overall, this is an interesting area where Pharma can get easily involved in Web 2.0 – what are your thoughts or comments?

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Posts from the ‘Social Media’ category

Social media is changing the way we interact and do a lot of things