As social media in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry becomes more widespread, a growing trend is ePatient communication. The internet has become the go-to source of information for many people; that holds true as they research diagnoses, check up on current research, and connect with others for support. Citizen bloggers, with a particular diagnosis, educate [...]

With physicians being among the biggest adopters of the Apple iPad, it is no surprise that it has become a key part of a pharma sales rep’s toolkit. A 2012 Manhattan Research report confirmed that 65 percent of “ePharma” docs who met face-to-face with pharma salespeople used an iPad, representing an increase from 30 percent [...]

Thank you to Morten Hjelmsoe, CEO of Agnitio, for contributing this post.  This is a turning point for pharmaceutical marketing. Right now, technology is being implemented that will shape how we relate to healthcare professionals in the years to come. So it’s important to be certain about the kind of future that we want to [...]

Thank you to Noël Ashekian, Marketing Communications Manager at Viscira for contributing this post. Dynamic interactive and new-media solutions are a way for pharmaceutical companies to get physicians’ attention and to have their product messages stand out in an increasingly crowded space. There are many different types of solutions, including interactive sales aids which provide a [...]

Thank you to Beth Bengtson for contributing this post.  How will digital health communications change this year? Certainly there’s work to be done on this front. Here are the musings of the Hale Advisors team on where we need to evolve as communicators and the trends to watch. Evolve: We need to become more than marketers [...]

Submitted by Vineet Thapar, SVP, Group Creative Director, Digitas Health EU Ages ago, when digital was considered separate from everything else, marketers looking for a low-cost alternative to other channels quickly extended their patronage to digital constructs. The promise of one-to-one marketing, two-way conversations and dazzling multimedia was hypnotic, with the browser considered an effective (and [...]

The consequences of poor planning and procrastination in the approval process have plagued the progress of new initiatives in the pharmaceutical industry for years. While gaining approval from Med/Legal/Regulatory (MLR) teams is meant to ensure stable, ethical, and lucrative production, the deployment of these new initiatives often fall behind and cost the company time and [...]

Special thanks to Nancy Meyer at Hale Advisors, Inc. for sharing this blog entry.   What can pharma learn from FarmVille? That enormously popular online game played—and shared—by millions on social networks, illustrates principles of engagement, interactivity, motivation, and loyalty that can be harnessed by healthcare firms. It’s called gamification, applying game thinking and game mechanics [...]

Special thanks to Nancy Meyer at Hale Advisors, Inc. for sharing this blog entry.  The healthcare sector spends millions of dollars on advertising, but how much of what is being communicated is really being understood? When one considers that as many as half of all American adults have limited literacy skills and even more—as many as [...]