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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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Earlier this week, Mark Senak who writes the EyeonFDA blog, offered his insights and analysis of pharma’s relationship with Twitter. Today, he tackled YouTube and Pharma. While YouTube has been around a lot longer than Twitter, pharma’s use (with the exception of Johnson and Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis and Tibotec) of the popular video-sharing site has been extremely limited despite the ability of the entity that posts the video to eliminate or regulate the ability of users to leave and share comments after viewing it. 

I suspect that the industry’s reluctance to use YouTube may be related to the lack of regulatory guidance for this medium. Nevertheless, I don’t completely understand why drug makers have chosen not to use the widely popular video site to increase patient awareness about certain medical conditions or to promote patient wellness. These types of videos would likely be appreciated by the public and quite possibly help to repair tarnished image of the pharmaceutical industry held by many consumers and stakeholders.

Hat tip to Mark!

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Viewing!!!!!

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Mark Sendak, author of the incisive EyeonFDA blog and social media enthusiast, has been keeping a watchful eye (pun intended) on the growing number of pharmaceutical companies that are adding channels and videos to YouTube. 

On his blog today, Mark reviews several new channels developed by Novartis, Johnson and Johnson, Teva, Boehringer Ingelheim and AstraZeneca. While a growing number of pharmaceutical companies continue to add new channels on YouTube, Mark contends that the “success of these channels has varied greatly and several companies have obviously developed the channels without any idea of what they would like to do with them and some of the channels show obvious signs of neglect.”

To learn more about pharma’s incursion on YouTube, read Mark’s post!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Video Watching

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The New York Times reported today that for the first time, Internet users are spending more time on social networking and video sites than on e-mail. According to a report by Nielsen, there was a 1,905 percentage change in the time that users spent viewing online video and an 883 percentage increase in social networking use from February 2003 to 2009.

These changes represent something of a paradigm shift in consumer's relationship with the Internet. People are increasingly moving away from portal-oriented sites, like shopping directories to social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook and providers of niche content.

While marketers have yet to master advertising on social networking sites, Internet pundits and social media enthusiasts believe that over the next year or so a viable business model will emerge that is reliant on social networking user influence and opinions.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!

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Twitter, the microblogging platform, is the current rage in social media. According to @Shwen, who writes the Med 2.0 Blog, it grew by 752% in 2008. Shwen is a social media enthusiast who is trying to convince the life sciences industry that Twitter and other social networks can be leveraged to improve drug development and deliver healthcare.

According to a recent post on Med. 2.0, there are currently three pharmaceutical companies that are actively using Twitter: Novartis (@novartis), Boehringer Ingelheim (@Boehringer) and Astra Zeneca (AstraZenecaUS). Also, it appears that Johnson and Johnson (@JNJcomm) launched an account last week. Tweets from @novartis and @Boehringer occur fairly regularly whereas AstraZenecaUS tweets are rare. Unlike YouTube, where pharmaceutical sponsors who create channels can regulate and control content, it is much more difficult to manage Twitter because tweets are in real time, uncensored (for the most part) and can be globally disseminated within seconds.

Despite these issues, Med 2.0’s Shwen muses “I can only imagine that more pharma companies are going to be jumping on board the Twitter-train sooner rather than later. How they use it to engage, on the other hand, is going to vary greatly from company to company. At the very least, I see companies setting up accounts as “listening posts”, but others may choose to engage, like @boehringer does in an informal manner. Whatever the case, Twitter is fast becoming the new dominant space for listening and/or engaging the life sciences community.”

Like Shwen, I believe that it a matter of time before pharma and biotech realize that they must embrace social media (in all of its various forms) to remain competitive in today’s increasingly interconnected marketplace.

For those of you who may be interested, you can follow BioJobBlog (@Biojobblog) and Biocrowd (@Biocrowd) on Twitter too!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Twittering

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The Eye on FDA blog reported today that AstraZeneca and Sanofi-Aventis have joined the ranks of Abbott, GSK, J&J and SanofiPasteur on YouTube. Pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of the power of YouTube and other social media sites because regulatory guidance hasn’t been issued on its use to promote products or brand awareness. In other words, this is uncharted territory and companies can essentially 'test the waters' to see how far regulatory agencies will let them go.  I suspect that early life sciences company adopters of social media will garner substantial ROI before regulatory guidance is issued.

A lack of regulatory oversight, the ability to manage and control content and the low costs associated with creating Internet videos make YouTube and other social media sites attractive to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The life sciences sector is just beginning to recognize the power of social media and the role that it may play in promoting products and brand awareness to consumers.  Expect many more life sciences companies to experiment with social media in the near future--its a veritable goldmine!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Video Watching!!!!!!! 

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About a year ago, I was eating lunch and bunch of pharma executives were at the table next to me. I inadvertently overhead bits of their conversation and I heard the words, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube mentioned. This suggested to me that pharma was more aware of social media (and its business implications) than pharma publicly cared to admit. Pharma has been reluctant to embrace social media because of possible legal and regulatory ramifications. Nevertheless, a few companies have decided to boldly go where no pharma company has gone before—to YouTube.

The Eye on FDA blog, which is very bullish on social media, has been keeping aof pharma companies that have created channels on YouTube, the video site owned by Google. To date, Sanofi Pasteur, GSK, Abbot and JNJ have taken the YouTube plunge (see SanofiPasteurTV , GSKVision, AbbottChannel, andJNJHealth).  I suspect that pharma companies are willing to take a risk on YouTube, because unlike other social media platforms, they can disable the functionality that allows viewer to leave comments, kudos or kvetches after viewing videos. This shields the companies from unwarranted claims, misinformation about its products and negative publicity.

At present, the US Food and Drug Administration, has issued little or no guidance on the use of social media by drug makers. This means that drug makers are in uncharted territory and can experiment with social media without fear of much regulatory oversight or scrutiny.  Now that pharma has broken the social media barrier, I wonder whether MySpace, Facebook and Twitter (the hottest new social media tool at the moment) will be next. Interestingly, I learned yesterday that Novartis uses twitter and can be followed @Novartis.

Off the record conversations with MySpace representatives suggest that a number of pharmaceuticals have quietly created branded product pages on MySpace for years.  As the MySpace rep put it, how can you ignore an audience of 60 million people?  Further, Facebook’s fan pages are growing in popularity and don’t be surprise to see pharma pages begin to appear there. It will be interesting to see how pharma will incorporate social media into its business and marketing models in the future.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Video Watching!!!!!!!!

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It was only a matter of time after J & J launched its health channel on YouTube two weeks ago, that other pharma companies would begin to post videos on video-sharing sites. As a general rule, nobody in pharma wants to be first but after the first company takes the plunge, nobody wants to be left out or behind. Therefore, it came as no surprise when late last week, GlaxoSmithKline (which has a tendency to be second-to-market with competing products), launched a beta version of it so-called GSKCIC channel on You\Tube.

 According to a post on the Pharmalot blog, so far there are only two videos on the channel. One describes the company ongoing commitment and fight against disease in the developing world (ironically, the video ends prematurely).The second, which is full length, features CEO Andrew Witty telling us about his career at GSK (which began in 1985 as a management trainee) and how GSK is looking for a few good employees who “like a good challenge.” Curiously, the day after the Witty video appeared on YouTube, GSK announced that it was laying off about 90 workers or 10% of its work force at its manufacturing plant in Zebulon, North Carolina. A company spokesperson said that more cuts are expected at the North Carolina facility.

Maybe someone at GSK ought to tell its CEO that the company isn’t hiring at the moment?????????

Hat tip to Ed at Pharmalot!

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!

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First, King Pharmaceuticals posted a non-branded high blood pressure video on YouTube in early 2007. Next, Novartis added a 60-second commercial (as part of its Fluflix campaign) asking people to submit videos about what it's like to have the flu. Earlier this year, Insmed upped the ante by posting a video lobbying for new legislation for the approval of follow-on biologics in the US. However, these pharma assaults on YouTube pale in comparison to the launch of Johnson & Johnson’s health channel on YouTube earlier this week.

The channel currently showcases a small selection of health information videos created by NBC News chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman while she worked J&J. Video sites, like YouTube and Vimeo, offer pharma companies a place to feature expensive off media advertising assets (that are currently collecting dust) and to post ads for new drugs and products that are ready for launch.  J &J is the first pharma company to recognize that it can leverage the current social media craze to increase its visibility, sell more drugs and bolster its stock price!

While companies could host videos on their own websites,YouTube’s massive traffic of more than 80 million users offers companies a much larger and diverse audience. And unlike blogs or forums, pharma companies have complete control over the content of the videos that they post on video websites. Moreover, they don't have to worry about negative comments being left after a post (YouTube comments can be turned off), and they can brand and edit video content to target a particular demographic or audience. Finally, videos can be changed or removed by companies as needed.

The bad news is, that like all other forms of media on the Internet, there are currently no regulations for videos posted by pharma companies on video websites sites like YouTube. In other words, pharma companies can do or say whatever they want in the videos that they post—never a good thing! I suspect that at some point FDA will draft a guidance document or two on the topic. But pharma companies need not worry, it will likely be many years before the agency divines regulations guiding the messaging and content of online pharmaceutical videos.

The appearance of pharma videos on YouTube, and the growing number of pharma profiles on social networking sites indicates that pharma is ready to embrace social media as the next best thing since DTC advertising. I was wondering what took them so long?

I hope that J&J doesn’t start following me on Twitter!

Hat tip to Eye on FDA for the story!

Until next time,

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!

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Insmed a small, Richmond Va-based biotechnology and manufacturing company has upped the ante in the fight to bring follow-on biologics to America.  After spending some time on Capitol Hill, company executives  found that “people in Washington, as well as payors and patients don’t have an understanding at a reasonable level of the debate that is going on and the issues” surrounding that follow-on biologics debate. To reach as wide an audience as possible and frame the debate on the issues” the company decided to use the Internet to take the initiative to the next level–the Internet.

A key to Insmed’s initiative is an economic study on the potential savings follow-on biologics could provide to patients, payors and healthcare providers. The study is still being conducted and its results will be published on the net when available. The campaign also includes advocacy components that like user-generated content (blogs) and social networking sites. Recently, Insmed posted a video clip on YouTube that feature one of its scientists extolling the virtues and cost-saving advantages of follow-on biologics.

As many of you may know, I have long been an advocate of legislation to allow the approval and sale of follow-on biologics in the US.  Unfortunately, until now, only one side of the debate–from big biotech and BIO–has been heard by the American public. This has largely been due to marketing muscle and deep pockets of big biotech coupled with a lack of unity among follow-on biologics advocates. Web 2.0 with its social networks, blogs and video sites allows people with the smallest voices to be heard. And, sometimes those small voices can turn into  roars!

Kudos to Insmed for having the courage to boldly go where no generics manufacturer has gone before–on YouTube! Yeah baby!!!

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (see you on Web 2.0)!!!!!!!!

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