There has been considerable discussion in recent times about ‘local’ versus ‘global’ engagement strategy, or whether there is some kind of mystical balance of the two. Earlier this year Creation Healthcare was pleased to facilitate seminars in New York and London with leading global pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, during which the constraints and opportunities of global healthcare engagement strategy were discussed.

Creation Healthcare are long-time proponents of setting aside time to define an overarching global strategy; we are therefore sometimes asked by new clients, “Do you really think we should have a global engagement strategy?”

This is a great question, to which we (almost) always answer “Yes”.

Some may say, “What about the local nuances?”; “What about the language challenges?”; “What about the regulatory variations?”; “What about the different technology constraints in each region?”; and so on.

We certainly do understand these issues. With 30 consultants all over the world Creation Healthcare is well aware of the challenges facing each territory, and we are constantly increasing our local in-country knowledge in order to make the best recommendations for our global clients. As much as we often encourage global strategy, we also know that it is absolutely necessary to have a local, tailored strategy to suit each individual territory or brand.

It is also true that at a global and companywide level, there are inevitably some common guiding principles that can bring continuity and consistency to the way an organization communicates, presents the brand personality, and ultimately engages with people – even on an international scale.

Incidentally, if you are skimming this article to find the quick-fix, ‘give-me-the-ten-tips’ commandments, you may wish to pull out now.

The reason for the title of this article is that it describes an approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Let me explain using a ubiquitous metaphor. Most people in the world – regardless of their own personal religious belief, country of origin, or language – have heard of the so-called “10 commandments”. Indeed, quite a few people could list at least some of them from memory.

Interestingly, orthodox followers of the ‘Torah’ (as these books of laws are known) usually insist that there are actually 613 commandments all told, and that the 10 commandments are more of a ‘table of contents’ – a sort of cheat sheet for remembering the detailed laws and regulations.

Elsewhere, there is even a further distillation in to just two guiding principles. It is fair to say that in religious circles the 10 commandments have certainly permeated the human race over the past several thousand years, across millions of people in many languages and cultures.

We’ve found that this same concept also works for guiding an organization in healthcare engagement. Creation Healthcare maintains that it is possible to create ‘10 commandments’ which can be implemented globally, to bring new levels of (consistent, on brand) engagement.

Of course there really isn’t a single set of ‘10 commandments of healthcare engagement’ that would apply equally well to every company or organization, hence you will find no simple list here as a ‘take-away’.

Rather, each organization is uniquely different in its own right, with particular heritage, traditions, idiosyncrasies and ‘personality’. Therefore it makes perfect sense that each company should really develop their own global engagement strategy (and resulting 10 commandments).

Creation Healthcare can deliver a customized process to help you formulate your own global strategy 10 commandments; all you have to do is give us a call now.

On the day that we announce the winners of the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010, we will be launching an international seminar program where you can learn from the very best healthcare engagement in the world.

The seminar program kicks off in San Francisco on 26 January 2010, followed by New York on 12 February. European dates follow, with  London on 15 April.

San Francisco

Hilton Union Square, San Francisco
26 January 2010

Reserve your place now, or download a brochure for Healthcare Engagement Strategy 2010, San Francisco.

New York

Hilton Times Square, New York
12 Fenruary 2010

Reserve your place now, or download a brochure for Healthcare Engagement Strategy 2010, New York.

London

Hilton Trafalgar Square
15 April 2010

Reserve your place now, or download a brochure for Healthcare Engagement Strategy 2010, London.

Come to London and save £150

The London event will be an extra special opportunity, following the day after we are running the SMi MasterClass in Social Media for Pharmaceutical Companies. If you’re booking both events, we’ll give you a booking code that will enable you to book the Healthcare Engagement Strategy 2010 seminar at a price discounted by £150. Contact us to find out more.

The Healthcare Engagement Strategy 2010 seminar program is just part of our international speaking and conference schedule for 2010. To find out when we’ll be in your area during the year, see our events schedule.

It’s new, it’s very shiny, and it could be yours when you nominate for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards.

In January 2010, we’ll be announcing the best healthcare engagement activities from 2009, in the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards. We want to know who, or what, has made the biggest difference in healthcare by engaging people.

If you’re on Twitter, you can tell us who we should consider for recognition simply by tweeting a nomination using hashtag #hesawards and the word nominate. And when you do, we’ll thank you by entering you into a prize draw to win an iPod touch.

Who or what should I nominate?

Healthcare engagement is happening all around you – on websites; in social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or Youtube; through mobile applications; and offline too of course.

Think about hospitals, physicians and healthcare professionals, communicators, healthcare companies, government initiatives, charities, whatever or whoever you think has made a positive difference to healthcare through engagement activities during 2009.

Nominate to enter the Prize Draw

To enter the Prize Draw, simply send a tweet containing the word nominate and hashtag #hesawards.

Your tweet may nominate an individual, campaign, organization or tool for recognition in the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards, or you might simply be spreading the word about the Awards and the Prize Draw.

So for example, your nomination tweet might look something like this:

I nominate X for #hesawards

Where X is your nomination. It might be a website, a campaign, a project or programme, a hospital or facility, a company or charity, a person – whatever or whoever you want to nominate for a Healthcare Engagement Strategy Award.

Even better, tell us in your tweet why you’re nominating them!

You can read more about how to nominate here.

Enter the Draw just by spreading the word!

Don’t know who or what to nominate yet? You can enter the Prize Draw right now just by mentioning the word nominate and #hesawards. So why not spread the word using any of the sample tweets below to link to this page?

#hesawards: Nominate or spread the word using Twitter and you could win an iPod touch http://bit.ly/61Yb7M

Nominate best healthcare engagement for #hesawards and you could win an iPod touch http://bit.ly/61Yb7M

When you nominate a healthcare campaign / strategy / person / organization for #hesawards you could win an iPod touch http://bit.ly/61Yb7M

Win an iPod touch when you nominate for #hesawards http://bit.ly/61Yb7M

More about the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

You can find out more about the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards here. Or, try one of these links:

Announcing the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

Momentum is building for the HES Awards

HES Awards: The International Judging Panel

How to nominate for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

HES Awards: Your questions answered

Prize Draw Terms

1. The Prize Draw is operated by Creation Interactive Limited, a company registered in England & Wales number 3543711.

2. Entries for the Prize Draw will be comprised of those Twitter users who have tweeted at least once before the Deadline with a valid tweet. Valid tweets must contain the word nominate and hashtag #hesawards.

3. The Deadline for Entries is Midnight, GMT, on 31-December-2009.

4. The Winner will be selected from Entries at random by computer, after the Deadline for nominations.

5. The Winner will be announced by Tweet sent from @EngagementStrat

6. The Prize is an iPod touch 8GB

7. The Winner must provide a name and shipping address for the Prize, within 4 weeks of notification. The Prize will be shipped to the Winner’s address.

8. Employees of Creation Interactive Limited, including Associate Consultants, and their direct family members, may nominate or spread the word but are not eligible to win the Prize.

As nominations for the best in healthcare engagement come in thick and fast, we’re being asked various questions about the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards.

Who’s eligible?

The completely open nature of the Awards means that they’re literally open to anybody or anything that is engaging with others, to achieve health outcomes. That might sound a little vague, but we’re expecting to discover some new things through this process.

This approach is based on Creation Interactive’s ‘Discovery’ methodology, which looks at healthcare engagement starting with a completely open mind in order to discover insights that shape effective strategies.

So far, we’ve received nominations for websites, people, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, patient organizations, movements, Twitter users, and we’re sure there’s much more yet to come.

Who’s engaging whom?

We hoped that the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards would get even more people thinking about engagement in healthcare. And already, this is happening. In fact, we’re being asked about engagement – who is engaging whom?

This is exactly the kind of question we hoped you’d ask. There are so many players in the healthcare arena – healthcare professionals, regulators, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, government, industry associations, patient advocacy groups… and, of course, consumers, carers, and patients!

Now here’s our thinking: successful healthcare engagement should ultimately improve the health or lives of ordinary people – patients, carers, and/or consumers. Of course, to achieve that goal requires many components of communication and engagement. So for example we might see nominations for strategies around clinical trial recruitment, public health awareness, healthcare professional knowledge sharing, patient communities, or effective healthcare product communications. That’s just the tip of the iceberg though – we really don’t want to constrain your imagination when it comes to nominations.

Ultimately, I’ll come back to the basics: Where do you see successful engagement between parties in healthcare, that is achieving positive health outcomes? Nominate that now!

Is there a list of nominees?

Nominees are coming in literally by the minute, and we’re expecting that to continue right until nominations officially close at midnight on 31 December 2009. That’s one reason why we decided not to publish a list of nominations.

The other reason comes back to the open nature of the Awards. We want you to keep an entirely open mind when you nominate – not to be constrained by existing nominations.

However, we’ve had a fair few questions about who’s been nominated so I have mentioned a few by tweet, to get you thinking. Just search Twitter for #hesawards.

What if I nominate something or someone that’s already been nominated?

We’re really happy to receive duplicate nominations– in fact, receiving multiple nominations for the same activity, person or strategy will tell us something about its reach and influence.

Note that multiple nominations will not count as ‘votes’ as such, but we do encourage you to show your support for existing nominations. See ‘How to nominate for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards‘ for more details.

What categories can I nominate for?

You might already have guessed that the open, ‘Discovery’ nature of the Awards nomination process means we decided not to restrict you to specific categories.

In my view, this approach should be obvious really, and I wish more Awards were judged on an open basis like this. But it requires a whole new way of thinking.

In the ever-evolving, always-discovering world in which we live, I believe we must keep an open mind if we are to learn new things quickly.

It’s a way of thinking that is already natural to some elements of the healthcare industry – in my first interview with Johnson & Johnson’s Marc Monseau about the JNJBTW blog, he spoke about the way the blog’s audience was defining itself:

“After doing this for a year, one of my biggest surprises was that the people who read the blog are not who I originally thought they would be — they are not just members of the media or healthcare bloggers — but include doctors, nurses, employees, competitors, retirees, supporters of J&J and detractors. It’s that the audience — and this is important — the audience is defining itself — which is different from how we’ve looked at the world in the past.”

How do I nominate?

To nominate for an Award, simply tweet @EngagementStrat, include hashtag #hesawards in your tweet, and tell us what or who we should be considering.

For more ideas about nominating by tweet, see ‘How to nominate for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards‘.

How many nominations can I make?

Nominations are unlimited – you may nominate as many entries as you would like to.

Can I support an existing nomination?

Yes, we encourage you to do so. See see ‘How to nominate for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards‘ for more information.

Is there an entry fee?

No, there’s no entry fee! It’s completely free to nominate entries – just send a tweet (see ‘How to nominate for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards‘ for more information on how).

This means you really can nominate any piece of successful healthcare engagement, right now. We want to hear from as many people as possible – so far we’ve heard from industry insiders, PR companies, agencies, professionals, and patients. Keep those nominations coming!

When and how will Award Winners be announced?

The winners of Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards will be announced first in January’s edition of Healthcare Engagement Strategy e-journal which will be published and distributed on Tuesday, 26 January 2010. Results will not be released via Twitter until after the e-journal has been published.

To make sure you’re first to hear the results, subscribe to the e-journal for free at http://engagementstrategy.com.

Who will be selecting the winners?

We’ve put together an international Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards judging panel, selected from Creation Interactive’s team members in Australia, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the USA.

Find out more about the International Judging Panel.

Where can I find out more about the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards?

We’ve written a few articles that will tell you more about the awards. Try these for further reading:

Announcing the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

Momentum is building for the HES Awards

HES Awards: The International Judging Panel

How to nominate for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

Or, to see the latest tweets around the hashtag #hesawards, check What the Hashtag or search Twitter for #hesawards. And join in the conversation!

More questions?

Go ahead and ask! Tweet me @EngagementStrat or email me.

Finally, thanks for your support. And don’t forget to keep nominations coming in by tweeting @EngagementStrat with #hesawards.

When we announced the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards a few weeks ago, we hoped that we would start a conversation about where the really effective engagement is happening in healthcare.

We’ve been discussing effective engagement in healthcare all year through our Healthcare Engagement Strategy e-journal, but now we wanted to hear more about your ideas. Where have you seen the best outcomes from healthcare engagement during 2009?

And you certainly have been sharing your views! We’re excited to see nominations coming in thick and fast, and with them, some real encouragement from healthcare companies and communications experts.

So, thanks for your encouraging Tweets, your nominations, and for spreading the word. Together, we can help celebrate the achievement of real health results through engagement.

A different sort of Award

We hoped that the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards would mark a different approach to recognising effective engagement. We wanted to create something entirely open.

So, no predefined categories to constrain nominations, no awards entry fee, in fact not even a formal awards ceremony to speak of. We wanted nominations from people who have experienced the benefits of a healthcare campaign, or who have actively engaged on health issues.

Nominations keep coming!

We wanted to encourage the international healthcare community to get involved in nominations – and you certainly have! Nominations have come in thick and fast via open Tweets and Direct Messages, and by email.

Find out more

And with the dialogue, you’ve told us you want to know more about the Awards. So I’ve published a few additional resources that will hopefully inspire you to get involved and nominate entries.

You can find out more here:

Announcing the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards: Your Questions Answered

HES Awards: The International Judging Panel

How to nominate for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards

Keep up your support: you’re making a difference!

Every time you tweet with #hesawards, you continue to encourage innovation and a focus on real outcomes from engagement in healthcare.

So don’t forget to keep spreading the word to help us uncover the most effective healthcare engagement in 2009. Nominate (another) entry by tweet with #hesawards, or simply spread the word by tweeting this, or a variation:

Nominate strategies, campaigns & people for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards: Tweet @EngagementStrat with tag #hesawards

The Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards judging panel is made up of selected members of Creation Interactive’s international team from around the world, with specialist experience in healthcare and digital engagement.

Alan Bowden, Australia

Alan Bowden studied in Cardiff and London, UK, and has since had an extensive international career in healthcare marketing and communications. His international work has included coaching global industry teams based in Asia, and customer research in the biotechnology industry in the USA, UK, and internationally. Based in Australia, Alan is a member of Creation Interactive’s Associate Consultant team.

Daniel Ghinn, United Kingdom (Chair of the Panel)

Daniel Ghinn co-founded Creation Interactive, the engagement strategy consultancy in 1998. Today he is the consultancy’s Director of Digital Engagement, Healthcare & Government, and editor of Healthcare Engagement Strategy e-journal, which is read by business leaders and communicators in the world’s leading healthcare organizations.

Pedro González, Spain

A qualified physician, Pedro’s extensive career in healthcare has spanned both agency and client-side roles in Marketing and Corporate Communications. With past roles in Pfizer and Aventis, Pedro is no stranger to healthcare engagement strategies. Based in Madrid, Spain, he is a member of Creation Interactive’s international Associate Consultant team and is currently working on international engagement projects for a major pharmaceutical client.

Paul Grant, United Kingdom

Prior to joining Creation Interactive in the UK in 2006, Paul Grant worked in the Australian and Pacific Rim region with global healthcare brands including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Boots Healthcare. Today, Paul is Creation Interactive’s Head of Strategy Implementation and is responsible for the deployment of successful engagement strategies in healthcare and government.

Nancy Lugassy, United States

Nancy Lugassy has an extensive track record in government and private sector digital engagement campaigns. Her experience in the healthcare industry includes health and wellness initiatives and consumer research whilst working with Nitro, SS+K and Grey World Wide in New York. Today, Nancy is a member of Creation Interactive’s Associate Consultant team based in the United States.

Verónica Tapia, Mexico

Verónica Tapia’s most recent role prior to joining Creation Interactive’s Associate Consultant team was as Innovation Manager with AstraZeneca in the UK, where she led a pilot and subsequent roll-out of an online engagement resource for healthcare professionals. She will be judging the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards from her family home in Mexico before travelling back to the UK in the New Year.

I’ve already described how the unique nature of the Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards means there are no predefined categories, no entry fee, and no long-winded nominations. In fact, we’re primarily encouraging nominations by Tweet.

At its simplest, tweet @EngagementStrat and mention #hesawards

So, how should you make an effective nomination? As with many aspects of the Awards, the answer to this is something that’s becoming clear as we take this journey together and nominations come in. A simple nomination might look like this:

@EngagementStrat I nominate [A] for #hesawards

…where [A] is someone or something that deserves recognition – such as an organization, or a Twitter user, a strategy, a campaign name, or a web address.

Or, why not help us out by telling us why?

@EngagementStrat I nominate [A] for #hesawards because [B]

…where [B] is all the reasons why (or as much as you can fit into the remaining characters in your tweet!)

Feel free to tweet more than once, if you would like to tell us more. Tweet about results, impact on patients, and strategies. So for example you might tweet like this:

#hesawards [A] achieved [C]

Where [C] is the outcome or results of engagement.

We’re also seeing people add their support or comments to nomination tweets. A supporting tweet might look like this:

I agree, because [D] RT @… I nominate [A] for #hesawards because [B]

…where [D] is your additional reason why.

We don’t mind at all if you tweet a nomination that’s already on our radar. Multiple nominations and mentions won’t count as votes as such, but your tweets will help us to build a picture of the nomination and its influence, reach, and effectiveness.

Finally, I should say that you don’t have to mention @EngagementStrat in your tweet, but you must include hashtag #hesawards.

And don’t forget to keep spreading the word to help us uncover the most effective healthcare engagement in 2009. Simply tweet this, or a variation:

Nominate strategies, campaigns & people for Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards: Tweet @EngagementStrat with tag #hesawards

Last week, 12-13 November 2009, saw the FDA’s ‘Public Hearing on Promotion of FDA-Regulated Medical Products using the Internet and Social Media Tools’. This was the long-awaited opportunity that pharmaceutical marketers worldwide had been waiting for, to engage in dialogue with the FDA about how the Internet has changed medical marketing.

The FDA public hearing in Washington DC

The last time the FDA held a hearing of this nature was in 1996, and with the rate of change in the way that the Internet is used, it was clearly about time that the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA has some constructive dialogue.

Not that the hearing included much dialogue. Packed with 69 presentations over two days, the FDA panel’s comments and questions were kept to a minimum. TheFDA’s formal response is expected to come next year.

v-Fluence’s Shea Johnson argues that investigating potential adverse events is a drain on time and resources

Earlier this year, we reported on the FDA’s warning letters about Google advertising to fourteen pharmaceutical companies and analysed the impact of regulation online. This action by the FDA signalled the start of things were changing in the FDA’s approach to the Internet and sparked a call for greater clarity about how pharmaceutical companies should market themselves online. According to both Google and Yahoo! at last week’s hearing, the effectiveness of pharmaceutical keyword advertising in the USA immediately dropped after the FDA warning letters as companies felt unable to provide enough information to encourage consumers to click through.

But the big issue wasn’t simply about reducing advertising effectiveness. Pharmaceutical marketers wanted to know what they could or could not do within the boundaries of regulation. The primary concern was that the boundaries were unclear.

A US-only impact?

Now, if you are a pharmaceutical marketer outside the USA, under a different regulatory regime, you might wonder what all this has to do with you. After all, the vast majority of the rest of the world does not operate a direct to consumer (DTC) model like the USA does, so many of the pharmaceutical social media campaigns that we’ve previously covered might seem irrelevant to you.

But the important lessons so far about the FDA hearing are not really about the specifics of FDA regulation or the DTC model for marketing medicines.

After all, the primary concerns amongst pharmaceutical companies about regulatory requirements, as cited by Johnson & Johnson’s Marc Monseau in a blog post about the hearing, are around the requirement to report any side effects that people may experience whilst taking medicines (a form of ‘adverse event’), and to ensurethat they do not promote their products beyond what is covered in their approved product label (promoting ‘off-label use’). Now, if you are outside of the USA, aren’t these amongst the primary regulatory issues that affect your online marketing too?

The Internet knows no boundaries

Of course, unlike regulators the world over, the Internet rarely discriminates on the basis of geographic boundaries. So if you are outside of the USA, what the FDA allow or do not will affect health consumers in your territory too. For example, whilst you might operate in a non-DTC environment where you cannot market your medicines to patents, those same patients in your territory may be engaging with your US-based colleagues’ social media marketing campaigns and discussing medicines.

And if you think that’s a bad thing, consider the alternatives: if an Internet user searches for one of your medicines and does not find a legitimate product website anywhere in the world, what do they find? In many cases, unapproved pharmacies offering to sell potentially fake medicines without prescription to unsuspecting patients (and that’s another story altogether).

One of the biggest difficulties in establishing clear regulatory guidance is in making sure that regulators understand or are advised on the technicalities of the Internet and social media. Unless regulators understand, for example, that in online encyclopedia Wikipedia, any member of the public can edit an entry, how can they decide who should be held responsible for its content?

It was clear that all speakers over the two-day FDA hearing understood the need for regulator education, for the vast majority of time was spent elaborating on how important the Internet is for healthcare and on how social networks work. This resulted in much repetition but I would imagine that most members of the FDA panel left the hearing with at least a better understanding of social media.

Clear guidance is needed

The big challenge for the pharmaceutical industry worldwide is uncertainty about how it could and should interact using the Internet and social media. This issue was raised by many of the speakers at the hearing, including Eli Lilly’s Michele Sharp, who asked the FDA to take into account the unintended consequences of either providing no further guidance to the pharmaceutical industry or of imposing too many restrictions. Either approach, she said, would keep the industry silenced on the sidelines.

Sharp said that to date, Lilly has avoided significant interaction with healthcare professionals and patients about products in social media forums, largely because of lack of clarity in understanding the FDA’s expectations as to how Lilly could participate and comply with FDA requirements.

Accountability must rest with content creators

Not surprisingly, speakers widely agreed that creators and publishers of information should be held accountable for the information that they create, control or promote including sponsored content. More importantly, it was widely felt that companies cannot be held accountable for information that they do not have editorial control over.

Safety information

In print advertising of medicines, much space is taken up in displaying important safety information required by regulation. This is one of the challenges faced in online advertising and one of the issues picked up in the FDA’s warning letters earlier in the year.

Various solutions to this were proposed, including suggestions that providing safety information just one click away should be allowed. There was, and no doubt will be for some time, much discussion about the pros and cons of this suggestion.

A new keyword ad format?

Not a company to miss a commercial opportunity, Google presented their proposal for a new ad format which it hoped would allow pharmaceutical marketers to advertise within FDA regulations.

Other ideas from presenters included FDA-approved Twitter hashtags, an FDA-approved logo, rich media advertising to allow lengthy information to be displayed in small spaces, processes for determining accountability, and a plea for a simple set of ‘can-or-cannot do’ rules.

Will anything change?

So after two days of talking, what is likely to change? The hearing may have helped the FDA gain a better understanding of the confusion pharmaceutical marketers are faced with regarding regulation and the Internet, but I have a feeling they knew something about this already.

One thing is almost certain: by the time the FDA make any ruling following the hearing, new platforms will have emerged that raise new questions and uncertainties – and of course, opportunities! Will the FDA be able to regulate in such a way as to cover any unforeseen platforms and digital media channels? I hope so, but I doubt it.

So what’s the big lesson? That nothing has changed. We’ve recently published interviews from pharmaceutical company social media communicators – Johnson & Johnson’s Marc Monseau on Twitter and Pfizer’s Bengt Mattson on his Swedish blog Ansvarsblogg – and both said that the platforms have not changed the basic rules of communication.

Untapped opportunities

In my experience, there are still huge untapped opportunities for those pharmaceutical marketers around the world who will carefully take measured steps in social media and the Internet. Yet the constraints of regulation are too often used by some as an excuse for poor engagement strategies.

Whatever changes or clarification emerge from the FDA or any other regulators worldwide, one thing is certain: regulators will not tell you how to do your pharmaceutical marketing effectively. I recommend that you continue to innovate, taking well planned, strategic steps to engage stakeholders. And speak with healthcare engagement experts at Creation Interactive about how our Discovery Methodology can help you achieve success in what is destined to remain a highly regulated healthcare marketing environment.

On the one hand, physicians’ adoption of social media interaction with patients through the Internet is restricted due to legal and regulatory issues. On the other hand, patients seek trustable health information on the Internet and want to share their experiences and exchange information with peers. In a low engagement, low trust environment like the Spanish healthcare market, the www.vi.vu experience shows a path for interaction between users (patients or not) and professionals in a credible and safe way.

The network is open to health professionals and patients on a linking and question-and-answer basis. Each member can create their own network of professionals depending on the kind of information they are interested in. It is possible to interact privately but many of these conversations are archived publicly, enabling anyone with similar conditions to benefit from reading about them. Professionals also interact between them and exchange information.

Attracting professionals through reputation

Spain has a universal and publicly funded National Health System. Although in some regions the right for physician election exists, this is not the general rule. At least 25% of citizens have private health insurance to supplement the public offer. It is in this setting that physicians and hospitals or clinics begin to be conscious of the need to have a reputation among patients in order to be selected through the private insurance.

The www.vi.vu network offers professionals and healthcare providers a system for referencing and recommendation based on their professional profile and their activity in the network.

In the network, physicians act as mediators of information between parties. As Ignacio Parada – manager of the network – says, “they prescribe trustable and useful information”.

In this sense, the more active you are, the better indexing ranking you have in search engines (like Google) and the greater likelihood you have of obtaining a recommendation as a trustable source from patients and/or other professionals.

The network was launched last March in its final beta version and already has 400 professionals and thousands of users who share more than 4,000 links and 700 answers. Users and Patients join the network by invitation from professionals or by their own means.

Empowering patients

www.vi.vu permits any member to build his own team of professionals which provides useful information and counsel, either publicly or privately. This enables the patient to be in charge of his recovery process or to prevent any illness he could be exposed to.

Once the patients have acquired experience in an illness they can also be a trustable source of information for others and can upload or link any information they consider will help others.

Crowdsourcing information

The information traded in the network is already on the Internet. “There is no need to create new content when there are huge amounts on the Internet from credible sources”, says Parada. These credible sources are better know by health professionals. In some cases, the professional can refer to content created by the pharmaceutical industry or insurance providers. In this way, they have an  opportunity to send their information to patients. “But of course, they have to adapt it to the patient and sweep away any advertorial or message inducing to purchase of their products”, according to Parada.

www.vi.vu offers different services to health providers who want to carry out network projects with health professionals, such as talking to members on a daily basis in order to help them provide information in best manner. For example, many professionals have good articles about how to cope with a disease which might be better understood if translated into audiovisual media or supported by graphics.

Vi.vu aims to show professionals in the healthcare industry the opportunity they have through the network, to become trustable agents and gain credibility from the public. They think that the future of the network will come from the ability of the industry to participate, be a player and help the network to succeed in enabling all agents to benefit from the service.

They have a good number of clever ideas to develop the network further. For example, they plan to offer educational disease management programs or drug interaction databases. For now they prefer to consolidate the model, help professionals understand the importance of their online reputation and the vital role they can play in guiding their patients through trustable sources of information.

In the international world of healthcare communications, Europe, with its many different languages and regulatory frameworks, has become a melting pot for innovation that places it in a unique position in healthcare digital engagement worldwide.

Amongst this landscape of innovation are some exciting examples of digital engagement focused on regional or national stakeholders.

Take for example ansvarsblogg.se, Pfizer’s corporate social responsibility blog in Sweden. It’s in Swedish language so if you do not speak Swedish, Google Translate will enable you to read the essence of the blog in your local language.

Ansvarsblogg.se: open for engagement

The blog is a still-rare example of a pharmaceutical company blogging in an informal tone, and inviting comments from Internet users. Outside of heathcare, this would not be unusual. But in the highly regulated world of the pharmaceutical industry, it is still only the pioneers who are creating platforms for open engagement.

I asked Bengt Mattson, CSR and Environmental Manager at Pfizer AB in Sweden and the creator of the blog, about the vision behind setting it up. He said that it was all about two-way communication:

“The driver for us to start the blog was that we felt we needed to find a more interactive form of communication. Most of the web-based communication, and other types of information channels we have historically used, are more one-way information than a real stakeholder dialogue. But due to the very regulated environment concerning pharmaceutical communication (just see how complicated it is to take the Information to Patient proposal to a final decision within EU) we decided to start up our Corporate blogging initiative in a ‘not so touchy’ environment, i.e. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Affairs. We plan to evaluate this initiative and see how to take the next step utilizing web 2.0 opportunities.”

Avoiding lengthy content approvals

Mattson says that he has been able to take advantage of the blog’s interactive communication platform by focusing on the kind of content that avoids lengthy approval processes:

“As long as I stay out of ‘touchy areas’ like products, pharma policy issues etc, my posts do not need ‘pre-approval’ internally. Hence it’s a much faster way to act and react to incidents, actions and news articles that come to my notice.”

Pfizer Sweden’s experience with Ansvarsblogg.se illustrates how a digital engagement channel such as a blog can benefit stakeholder engagement. I asked Bengt about the impact that the blog has had on engagement.

“We have managed to reach stakeholders that we did not reach before, but also, which is equally important, have a more regular interaction with some of the folks that we have met in different forum before. And due to the fact that I try to be very open and transparent, both telling the good side of the story and the not-so-good side, it has really built credibility.”

He went on to say that the blog has achieved recognition from local media:

“A year ago when a Swedish on-line news media within the CSR area (http://www.csripraktiken.se) rated Corporate CSR blogs (mine was the only one from the Life Sciences sector) they were really impressed by my blog. They felt it was open and honest, which they thought was uncommon in other blogs ‘green washed by a Communication department’ before publishing.”

Dare to be personal

Mattson says that the blog has had an impact on how he works but that the basic rules of communication remain unchanged:

“It is a great tool, but it does take time from your ordinary work schedule of course. You have to be out there quite regularly and frequently. Do not believe that the common rules of communication are worthless – if you do not have something ‘of interest’ to tell, no-one will listen!”

An important aspect of the most successful corporate blogs is their personal communication style, and this is where a blog can be most effective at removing some of the corporate facade often encountered amongst pharmaceutical companies’ communications. Mattson is aware of this powerful aspect of Ansvarsblogg:

“You have to dare to be personal – that adds an extra dimension to ‘corporate communication’. I believe we made the right choice that we do review all comments to my blog before they go public. It is a great log tool for myself. I can always go back and see what I did and how the discussions went. And not least important – it is great fun!”

A journey of learning and improvement

As anybody exploring new horizons of digital engagement in healthcare and pharmaceutical companies will testify, every step is an opportunity to learn new things about what works and what does not. It’s a constant journey of learning and improvement. When I asked Bengt what he would do differently next time given what he has learned so far, he explained that applying the lessons learned is a work in progress:

“I would probably ‘launch’ the blog more actively. Although it is easily found through the www.pfizer.se webpage and we utilize different search engine tools to get it identified in Google search, it seems that people have problems finding it on their own. There is just so much out there already. Hence I would develop a strategy for the launch. I would also ensure that within communications through other channels we should always ‘promote’ the blog. We are still not there today…”

What next?

As Ansvarsblogg says, “Efforts in responsible business can only succeed if they work in dialogue with all stakeholders in society”. Mattson says that Pfizer’s experience with Ansvarsblogg.se will contribute to an evaluation of opportunities for a wider corporate blog and that he is considering other web 2.0 tools including Twitter to open up further interactive engagement.

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