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Mark Senak, social media enthusiast and author of the EyeonFDA blog, raised the question on his blog today as to whether or not the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ought to have a fan page on Facebook: the ever expanding, ubiquitous social media platform. He aptly points out that FDA has already created a channel on YouTube and has a twitter account. So, why not a fan page on Facebook, he asked.

While Mark and I agree on most things, I am not convinced that having an FDA fan page on Facebook would make a difference in the way in which FDA communicates with the American public. FDA is already behind on the social media curve and, as the FDA public hearings held late last year suggest, the agency is struggling with formulating regulatory guidelines for its use by drug and devices manufacturers. Might not creating a FDA fan page on Facebook be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s (agency) back? 

Perhaps I am overreacting to the whole Facebook phenomenon and grossly under estimating the agency’s capabilities. But I simply don’t get Facebook!  At best, it is overwhelming, difficult to navigate and seemingly cluttered mindless chatter and people engaging in Mafia wars. There is no question that a fan page would increase FDA’s exposure and its “hipness quotient” but to what end? The agency already has trouble maintaining and managing its existing web assets (have you ever tried finding information at FDA.gov?). Adding a new website would simply mean more work for overworked and underpaid government employee who seemingly play by different rules than the outside world.

Don’t get me wrong. I am an avid social media enthusiast who believes that persons who engage in social media must be “all in” to be effective. Having said that, I believe that the agency would be better served if it works to improve the navigability and accessibility to information on its existing web assets. There is no question that building an agency fan page on Facebook may convince Americans that FDA gets “the whole social media thing.” But if the fan page doesn’t provide Americans with relevant and useful scientific, medical and regulatory information, then adding a FDA fan page to Facebook will do little more than increasing the heft of an already bloated social media platform whose utility and effectiveness is already beginning to wane.

In my experience, building a website or fan page is the easy part; continuing to populate the pages and sites with useful, meaningful and temporally-relevant content is the difficult part!

Hat tip to Mark for starting the conversation!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

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It’s no secret that pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are “not in love” with social media. However, whether life sciences company like it or not, social media is beginning to affect human clinical testing with an increasing number of patients demanding access to unapproved experimental drugs to treat life-threatening illnesses. 

In a recent article that appeared in the January 15, 2010 issue of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News entitled “Expanded Access to Investigational New Drugs”, Natalie Douglas, CEO of UK-based Idis Pharma wrote:

"...the trend toward greater transparency of drug development pipelines and the accessibility of powerful social media tools, have led us to a more informed empowered and vocal population of patients. This, in turn, has led to increased demands for access to unapproved drugs that are in various stages of human clinical testing. “Patients can easily access information about investigational drugs via the Internet and are leveraging social media tools such as YouTube, Twitter and blog to influence companies to garner access to them” Douglas added.

This can place enormous pressure on the companies that are testing investigational new drugs because the safety and efficacy of the drug candidates has yet to be determined. Understandably, companies are loath to provide patients who don’t meet clinical trial inclusion requirements access to experimental drugs with unknown safety and efficacy characteristics. Nonetheless, if requests for access to investigational drugs are denied, social media tools can easily be used to quickly and widely publicize the denial. According to Douglas, aggressive use of social media tools by patients seeking access to investigational drugs has helped their stories make national news. This can create gargantuan regulatory and public relations problems for companies with drugs in clinical development and put them at the center of an ethical and moral firestorm—despite their best intentions to develop new drugs that eventually may help millions of patients suffering from various diseases and conditions.

Many patient advocacy groups, consumers and shareholders understand the almost limitless reach of social media and its ability to influence public opinion, discussions and trends. Whether or not drug makers are willing to use social media, many have yet to understand that they are already part of the social media conversation that is taking place daily. And, as all social media enthusiasts have realized, if you are not part of the conversation then you don’t know what is being said about you on the Internet. More importantly perhaps, is that by choosing not to participate in the conversation, companies have lost all ability to influence and manage what is being said. In other words, life sciences companies that steadfastly choose not to use social media may, paradoxically, be setting themselves up for public relations and regulatory headaches that could have easily been avoided.

While the social media frenzy may be beginning to wane, there is no question that it has changed the way people interact and influenced the way business is transacted online and in real life. Companies that insist on clinging to past business practices that are exclusive, non-interactive and designed to promote opacity are likely to lose customers and market share as 21^st century technology continues to unfold.

Hat tip to Natalie!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Tweeting!

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e-Patients Connections 2009 (#epatcon) was held this past Monday and Tuesday at the Park Hyatt hotel in Philadelphia, PA. BioCrowd was one of several co-sponsors of the event. The theme of the conference, organized by Kevin Kruse a veteran medical communication and training expert, who now runs Kru Research, was to “reach, engage and educate empowered digital health consumers.” And, boy, did it deliver! While this was Kru Research’s first official conference, it was well organized, extremely interactive and the quality of the speakers was second to none! Topics that were featured included social media and the life sciences industry, technological advances in e-based healthcare delivery, the relationship between the news media and healthcare information and the continuing evolution of online and e-based healthcare communities.

Conference attendees included representatives from the life sciences industry, medical communications experts, advertising and marketing professionals and a multitude of social media enthusiasts and consultants who kept the Twitter screen humming throughout the meeting (a big shout out to the “troublemaking table”). And, surprisingly, there was a representative from the Division of Drug Marketing and Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) at the US Food and Drug Administration, who I believe, was one of the most sought after individuals at the meeting. CNN reporter Elizabeth Cohen who writes the Empowered Patient and racecar driver Charles Kimball, a type I diabetic and company spokesperson for Novo Nordisk also gave talks.

My favorite talks were those presented by online patient community organizers including Tricia Geoghegan of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals who created the Facebook ADHD Allies community, Lisa Tate of WomenHeart and Robert Schumm of Bayer Consumer Care who created Facebook Strong@ Heart and Rachel Lewinson of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Organization and Susan Harrow Rago of Novo Nordisk who created Juvenation.org a website dedicated to those with Type I diabetes. These communities are outstanding examples of how partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and advocacy groups can help to better educate the public and heighten awareness about potentially life-altering diseases. Another example of a great online community and healthcare portal is Insomnia 123.com. This website was conceived and constructed by Christine Macadams and her partners’ one of whom is a practicing physician. Unlike the other online communities, which are sponsored and mainly supported by consumer healthcare division of large pharmaceutical companies, Insomnia 123.com was exclusively created by a group of concerned individuals who wanted to better educate and improve the lives of people with insomnia—a largely unreported and self-medicated condition.

On the technical side, the talks presented by Lee Segal of Klick, Kevin Durr of Avantera , Ian Kelly of Red Nucleus and Scott Ballenger of ListenLogic were illuminating and extremely informative. Some of the innovations taking place in digital media are exciting and almost overwhelming at times (even for a social media enthusiast like me). I think the company to watch is ListenLogic which uses semantic search engines to collect real time data and “chatter” on the web. This technology may provide a cost-effective solution to assuage the concerns of many life sciences companies that claim that collecting and analyzing overwhelming amounts of data is one of the main reasons why they are reluctant to entry the social media space.

Marc Monseau of Johnson and Johnson gave an illuminating talk on his experiences as a corporate blogger and Twitter user and described some of the challenges that had to be overcome before his company was able to break the “social media barrier.” Janice McCallum, an economist by training and a healthcare communications and media expert gave an informative talk about the growing role and impact of patient-generated healthcare content on patient awareness and education.

Finally, the novel and innovative Pecha Kucha sessions were outstanding and extremely well done! While all were expertly crafted, Dr. Val’s and Jonathan Richman’s Pecha Kucha were memorable. Dr. Val’s, which was extremely powerful and moving, was performed entirely in verse and Jonathan’s was—well, one of Jonathan’s always entertaining and informative presentations.

In summary, the “e-Patient Connections 2009” was a resounding success and in my opinion reached its goal to “reach engage and educate empowered digital health consumers.” That said, I can’t wait for “e-Patient Connections 2010” meeting!!!

Hat tip to @ellenhoenig and @eileenobrien for inviting me to my first tweetup (great fun) and finally meeting @janice McCallum, @christianeTrue, @stevewoodruff and Silja aka @whydotpharma! 

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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BioCrowd co-founder, Vincent Racaniello, and I were chatting the other day with Crowdvine’s Tony Stubblebine (the guy who created the BioCrowd software platform) about the reluctance of scientists to embrace social media. Both Vincent and I, both scientists ourselves, posited that scientists are simply asocial or at the very least not comfortable engaging in social activities whether they be online or IRL. Tony, a self-anointed software geek, wasn’t buying into to our argument and noted that even software geeks are social!

This prompted me to do a little research and I found a blog post written by Nachiket Vartak a blogger and doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology. While the blog post focused mainly on reasons why bioscientists won’t use Twitter, I think that many of his observations can be used to generally describe the chilly relationship between many scientists and social media. Before you read on, I must inform you that I paraphrased and embellished some of Nachiket’s original ideas on the subject. That said, here are some of the reasons why bioscientists may not use social media.

1. The reputation of social networking sites
Many scientists disdain social networks because they believe that social networking sites and microblogging platforms like Twitter are nothing more than places to waste time. Those scientists who use social media usually do it in-between experiments and when planning activities which usually involve copious quantities of alcohol, for after laboratory hours fun. In other words, social media is for fun not for work. Also, many so-called serious scientists contend that “real science discussions” only happen on closed e-mailing lists or forums and not in the “open” on social networking sites.

2. The social activation barrier
According to Nachiket, the stereotype that scientists are asocial is well.....err...true! He asserts that many scientists feel more comfortable focusing on themselves (and their research) rather than interacting with others to learn what they have to say or what they may be thinking. And, many times, unless an individual can demonstrate that they are “smart” they probably aren’t worse listening to anyway. Finally, scientists train for years to become independent investigators. Not surprisingly, there is very little emphasis and importance placed on teamwork or social interactions with others scientists or lay people for that matter. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that many scientists aren’t particularly social or inclined to participate in extracurricular social activities.

3. Privacy aka “secrecy”
Science is a highly competitive endeavor and, in many cases, the discoveries that are made represent many years of sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears. With this in mind, nobody wants to be scooped or beat out by their competitors. Consequently, scientists are generally instructed to be very hush-hush when it comes to sharing any information or data that might give the competition a “leg up” in the competition. Any leak, large or small, could mean the difference between fame and failure and, perhaps more importantly, a successful career as a scientist.

In marked contrast, the success of social media is contingent upon its openness, sharing and transparency. Thus, as Nachiket aptly pointed out social media is antithetical to the very nature of science and scientists.

4. Legitimate channels of communication
The only acceptable and legitimate means of scientific communications are presentations at meetings and publications in peer reviewed journals. These forms of communication are the lifeblood of scientific community and critical to the success of all scientists. If you aren’t published, you have no credibility as a scientist. The scientific publishing and communication industry is big business and “the rules of engagement” in the industry have been well established and institutionalized. Unfortunately, social media threatens to destabilize the science publishing world both financially and philosophically and possibly change the way science information is communicated. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is little support for social media in scientific publishing world and the science community in general.

While the number of science blogs and podcasts continue to increase daily, scientific social networking sites continue to struggle. This is because the information flow in blogs and similar forms of social media can be easily monitored and controlled. This is not the case for social networking sites like BioCrowd and microblogging platforms like Twitter.
However, if scientists are truly asocial beings then none of the existing science social networking sites will gain traction and be successful. Call me crazy, but I think social networking is an ideal medium for scientists to exchange information, ideas and develop relationships that can help them jumpstart their careers!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!!!!!!

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Today is a sad day in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology blogging world. Pharmalot, a two year old, pioneering blog created by the intrepid Ed Silverman and the Star Ledger News has decided to call it quits. Unfortunately, the Star Ledger is in dire financial straits and it could no longer provide Ed with the support he needed to continue to run the Pharmalot blog. Please read Ed’s last blog post for the full story.

Pharmalot was a well crafted and informative blog. I frequently (more times then I care to admit) used Pharmalot as source material for many of my posts at BioJobBlog. I am not sure how I will fill the void left by Pharmalot’s untimely  demise!

I first met Ed about 8 years ago when he did a story about a biopharmaceutical company that I founded (along with Abe Abuchowski) called Prolong Pharmaceuticals.  His coverage was outstanding and I am pleased to report that Prolong is still in business today. Ed and I reconnected a little over a year ago at a panel discussion about scientific integrity and journalism. Ed shared the podium with the WSJ Health Blog, the New York Times, Advanstar Publications and several well known authors who write about pharma and biotech. I was truly impressed with his understanding of the pharmaceutical industry (he is a journalist not a scientist) and his commitment to telling people the truth regardless of the consequences. I took his message to heart and have attempted to apply the same philosophy to my posts at BioJobBlog.

I want to personally thank Ed for his unwavering commitment to journalistic integrity and his help in ferreting out the truth. I wish him the best for whatever the future may hold for him—he will be sorely missed.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!
 

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This is the first installment of Kevin Ahern’s Best of the Web at BioJobBlog. This month’s selection contains several technical sites that many practicing bioscientists will find useful. These include: Real Time PCR Primer Sets and RTPrimerDB. The selection that I found most interesting was Blogging the Biotechnology Revolution—although Kevin didn’t like the navigation features of this blog.

If you know of any websites, blogs, etc that you think are useful or interesting, please let me know.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Web Hunting!!!!!!!

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