social media | Biotech Strategy Blog

How people are using social media to find health information

By Pieter Droppert on May 12, 2011

The findings from a telephone survey of 3001 adults show that social media and the internet are increasingly important for finding health information.

This has important implications for the marketing professionals in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries who struggle to come to grips with social media in the absence of any FDA guidance.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project published today their survey on “The Social Life of Health Information, 2011.” It makes for interesting reading. Some of the statistics I found of interest, relating to the United States, include:

74% of adults use the internet

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Who cheats and breaks science news reporting embargoes?

By Pieter Droppert on May 5, 2011

Twitter is a fascinating source of news and current affairs that allows you to share in events from a distance. I was, therefore, fascinated to see Tweets from a recent healthcare meeting in which CNN discussed how they are having to compete with bloggers.

CNN claimed that this was due to bloggers violating embargoes on the publication of scientific data. As a science blogger, I questioned whether this naked assertion was correct?

Using Storify, I captured the Tweets and looked into more detail as to “Who cheats and breaks science new reporting embargoes?”

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Using Social Media to recruit for Cancer Clinical Trials

By Pieter Droppert on April 21, 2011

Richard Schilsky in Science Translational Medicine describes the challenges of enrolling patients into ever more complex cancer clinical trials. It is estimated that only 3-5% of cancer patients participate in clinical trials. Can social media be used to overcome barriers to enrollment?

There are many barriers to enrollment such as a lack of incentive by the physician if they can prescribe the drug off-label and obtain reimbursement, the additional legal liability, time required for research documentation and the need to follow human protection requirements such as informed consent and obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval.

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Posts tagged ‘social media’