Social Networking in Pharma

I had the great pleasure to participate in a panel discussion on “Social Networking in Pharma” sponsored by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association and hosted at Schering-Plough Corporation. Also on the panel were fellow Bostonian Daniel Palestrant, MD, the founder and CEO of Sermo, the leading physician community on the Web, and Janet Taylor, MD, clinical instructor of psychiatry at Columbia University at Harlem Hospital and a regular contributor to the Today Show. The event was moderated by Sharon Callahan, chief digital strategist at Grey Healthcare Group in New York.

If you’re looking for hints that pharma is ready to embrace social media on a more meaningful scale then you’ll be glad to know that 300 people showed up for the event in New Jersey.

Daniel’s one of the country’s leading architects of physician Web collaboration and he shared real examples of how the 60,000 registered physicians on Sermo are implementing Web 2.0 to improve healthcare across the U.S. Surprisingly, the numbers from Sermo show that older physicians have taken to the community aspects of Sermo as much as their younger so-called, Web-savvy colleagues. Daniel also provided an interesting perspective on how social networks like MySpace and Facebook that are based on recreational usage suffer what he called the “arc” of communities as membership peaks and then drops off for good, while ones like Sermo that are created on vocational need continue to grow. In case you didn’t know - Sermo is Latin for conversation.

Janet is one of the most inspirational healthcare professionals you’ll ever meet. Her background in community leadership and volunteerism is nothing short of amazing. Janet focused her comments on the shift in influence to online opinion leaders in healthcare communities. She also underscored the value of online patient communities and the dramatic rise in social networking among Hispanics and African-Americans.

Sharon, who is a two-time past president of HBA, did her usual great job of navigating the minefield of questions from the large audience while explaining how ad agencies like GGH are redesigning the way they market to patients and physicians. This is a huge change for most ad agencies.

Like usual, I challenged the executives and marketing professionals in the audiences to stop hiding behind the alleged regulatory issues to move beyond just monitoring and measurement and into the inevitable era of participation. Daniel, who has met with the FDA and the CMO of every pharma company, rightly said that participation or the lack of it by pharma companies is a business decision and not a regulatory issue.

Mike Spataro