What can go wrong in pharma (and health care)

involvement in social media?

Thanks to @whydotpharma and all smart people at #hcsmeu for

crowdsourcing.@vortexsurfer

Risks – what can go wrong?

• Adverse event reporting

• Negative discussions around the pharmabrand

• If no-one engages with you because your content is irrelevant or not interesting

Regulations

• Think carefully, proceed carefully, respond carefully

• Fear mentality: no one wants to get in trouble -> risk aversion and slow innovation

• However: regulations are less strict than pharma perceives

• Pharma can do a lot within current regulations if willing to facilitate vs. lead discussions

• Pharma worried about patients seeing branded information, but in UK, ABPI states that drug info related to brand MUST be viewable

Why do things go wrong?

• Lack of understanding and strategy

• Using SM as a megaphone - one way broadcast

• Failing to be real, just an act to get more sales

• Trying to BUILD when community is already there

• Sanofi Aventis facebook clear fail, but graveyard of no engagement is vast

Why be in SM?

• What do pharma use SM for? marketing? education? feedback?

• SM forces pharma to generate better content

• As long as you understand the limitations, SM allows direct useful engagement with your audience

How to do it?

• Diff. between promotional & informational material.

• Beware of the agency folly.

• Having someone internally who knows about SM, and sell it SM internally.

• Pharma is a non-DTC environment, we will never be able to fully do what FMCG companies do in SM.

My five cents

• Pharma is in SM to fulfill business goals.

• Pharma must be very careful(regulations, adverse event reporting, badvocates). When in doubt, don’tdo it.

• If you do it: know what you do, do it yourself, have stamina, be honest.

• Thanks from @vortexsurfer