How are you using video on your site?

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Patients who have a clear understanding of their after-hospital care instructions are 30 percent less likely to be readmitted or visit the emergency department than patients who lack this information.

The data comes from a new study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and was first reported in Annals of Internal Medicine.  Findings point to an opportunity for a win-win situation between pharma and hospitals.

Currently, one in five patients has a complication or an adverse event, such as a drug interaction, after being discharged from the hospital.  The study reveals that by following the “RED” protocol – Re-Engineered Hospital Program -  hospitals can reduce readmissions by 30% at an average savings of $412 per patient. The secret is to better communicate to patients their after-hospital care.

• Specially trained nurses help patients arrange follow-up appointments, confirm medication routines, and understand their diagnoses using a personalized instruction booklet.
• A pharmacist contacts patients between two and four days after hospital discharge to reinforce the medication plan and answer any questions.

A pharmaceutical product with high hospital usage could compete more aggressively on price when it has data demonstrating lower TOTAL costs. These costs include longitudinal data like after hospital care as well.  But how do you get that kind of data? In three straight-forward steps.

1. Pharma Company teams up with Hospital to implement RED standards for a given condition or disease state
2. Hospital and Pharma co-produce patient education – print, media, web – for use both in-hospital and at home after discharge
3. Patients are educated. Data collected. Resulting pharmacoeconomic interpretation shared between sponsors

This kind of solution would require especially clever communicators; those who can map out a successful strategy that spans multiple financial quarters. These kind of thinkers would be savvy enough to pull it off and  make it pay for itself. For example, a well-constructed deal could derive a revenue stream by licensing the co-produced patient education media to stock photo agencies like Corbis, or by repackaging the educational media for use at other sponors’ hospitals.

It’s a win-win-win situation. Patients win with fewer complications and readmissions. Hospitals win by demonstrating quality performance and attracting more, better-insured patients.  And Pharma wins both formulary status and pharmacoeconomic data for future efforts.

So the question is, who wants to give it a try?

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Seeing is Believing

One of the quickest ways to grok augmented reality is with this short video clip by Layar, a Dutch company producing a catalog of some 80+ datasets and “the world’s first mobile augmented reality browser.”

Digital Coffee & Morning Newspaper

In a concept video Nokia calls “Mixed Reality” the user navigates augmented reality environments with special glasses and gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch.  I believe that this degree of sophistication is years away from the mass markets.

But What About Health Care?

Augmented reality for health care networks would be a natural. Imagine searching for in-network providers or pharmacies by just pointing your mobile device. So far, I’ve just found talk, not publicly available demos. If you’ve got a link please share it in the comments below.

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Patient Education = Too Much Reading

When you work in pharma communications and cannot email, blog or write you are pretty much dead in the water.  In August I got Lyme Disease and for about a month lost the ability to read, yet still consider myself lucky. From hallucinatory fever to diagnosis I sped along at a zippy clip of  just four weeks. That included a full Saturday in the overflowing halls of a New York emergency room spent staring at my sneakers (shown right)

There’s little doubt that the U.S. health care system is truly broken. If you are lucky enough to work  in health care then you already know enough to rocket your way through the system. You can find appropriate treatment faster than the next person.  But what about everyone else? When you cannot advocate your own medical needs you are left to rely upon the kindness of strangers.

7 Things You Can Do To Reach Non-Readers

I found information gathering frustrating as a new “non-reader.”  Blurred vision and headaches drove me to seek out information in both audio and video format. Good patient education that didn’t rely upon reading tiny type was hard to come by.

Modern learning theory shows us that there are also visual, auditory and kinetic learners well represented in the general population.  So why not reach out to multiple patient populations in media that makes sense for their mileu?  Here’s a list of 7 ideas to jump your own thinking:

1. Search on the disease state or condition that your brand treats.  What kind of information appears in the results?  If you were a newly diagnosed patient, would you know where to click next?
2. Compare your text to image ratio. Some patients are readers, some prefer video, while others like to listen.  How well is your message represented across multiple media?  Are you overly reliant upon the written word? Are you balancing learning styles?
3. Search for video that explains the disease state. Was what you found actually relevant? Scary, huh?
4. Ask a trusted friend to go on an “information treasure hunt” through your publicly available online materials looking for specific information  Ask them how easy or how difficult it was to find the targeted information.
5. Lurk on a site like Patients Like Me for an hour or two.  Ask yourself  “what are the predominant emotions expressed by these patients?” Is your messaging addressing those feelings?
6. Leverage existing assets.  If you’ve got patient education that’s already approved by Regulatory Affairs – patient starter kits with DVDs for example – consider putting them online.
7. If all else fails, make a list of your videos and pass it on to your SEO agency.  Video trumps text.  Put it to work for your brand.

Learn more about online video patient education

Click to learn more about online video patient education

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Do AER staffing requirements prevent social media dialogue?

Assuming that the Nielsen study is statistically significant (is a sample size of 500 from Yahoo sufficient?) then what resources would be required to audit a message board with high volume traffic?

Example 1: ADHD Message Boards

ADHD Message Boards is a site devoted to the discussion of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. A particularly popular forum is Parents of ADHD Children with 105,938 posts as of July 2009.  Applying the Nielsen metric of 1/500 would yield 211 reportable adverse events.

Assuming an AER auditor could review 2 messages a minute, auditing this board would require 882 person hours – or 110 person days – over the life of the board. This would be an almost full time job were it not for the fact that ADHD Message Boards do not feature personally identifiable information (curiously, the site lacks both a privacy policy and a terms of use statement) so any reporting obligations on this site would be obviated by lack of an identifiable patient and identifiable reporter.

What about social media sites with identifiable information?

Facebook, however, is a completely different story, with members’ identifiable information including a first and last name, an email address, and often a phone number on the user’s “info” tab.

Example 2: ADHD Moms on Facebook

As of July 2009, McNeil Pediatric’s ADHD Moms page on Facebook counted 8,505 members.  Assuming 1 post per member multiplied by the “Nielsen coefficient” would yield a possible 17 adverse events, requiring 70 person hours – or 8.8 person days – of monitoring.  Of course not every member would post, and some members would post more than once, so these estimates are just back of the envelope calculations.  This scenario is staffable.

It’s a matter of appropriate dialogue

Richman’s blog post suggests that “adverse events are nothing more than negative reviews” and compares them to reviews for computer products.

For example, someone ranks a product 1-star and says “this didn’t work on my Mac.” Well, if you have a PC, you aren’t worried. Simple example, but you see how it works.

I would agree with him, but only up to a certain point. When making a purchasing decision for a discretionary product, I am willing to accept that “Dave from Des Moines” or “Sally from San Diego” might be qualified to review a new piece of software or a computer peripheral.

But are they qualified to provide accurate information about prescription drugs beyond their own experience? Unless they are willing to also share their age, weight, lifestyle, diet and exercise regime, medical history and enumerate any other medications they are also taking, I say “no.” There are too many confounding variables for me to believe there would be much, if any objectivity.

Social media is merely an extension of direct to consumer advertising

Television viewership is down.  Newspaper and magazine readership is down.  Follow the eyeballs and you end up on the Internet.  DTC spending was down 18% last year. Follow the money and you find a lot of people scrambling to recapture a portion of that DTC spend by reallocating budget to social media.  There’s some great work out there done by stellar agencies, but…

• Do you really want to hear tweets from a race car driver about Rx drugs?
• Do you really want to hear one mother’s opinion about an ADHD drug without the back story that her kid drinks 3 sugary colas and eats 2 candy bars a day?
• Or wouldn’t you prefer to learn about your insulin from video featuring method of action and patient testimonials?

Social media is merely a platform, not an ends onto itself.  So while Richman may be on to something with his “myth of adverse event reporting” the real question remains:

What evidence is there that patients want a dialogue with a pharmaceutical company given their lack of trust in the industry at large?

Listening without engaging may not be glamorous.  It may not recapture the entire DTC spend. But given the recession, $80 Billion in concessions to the federal government, and the need to maintain a low profile until health care reform legislation is hammered out, what’s wrong with using social media as a distribution platform and skipping the public dialogue altogether?

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Do’s and Musts

1. Establish a budget range up front
2. Scope the size of the agency’s clients
3. Develop a clear scope of work
4. Check to make sure agency top talent is still on-board
5. Gauge expertise
6. Match agency culture with your own corporate culture

Don’t and Pitfalls

1. Avoid paying for “full-service” unless you really need ancillary services
2. Don’t fall for “hot” or trendy – what works for others might not be right for you
3. Avoid signature creative looks that may prove restrictive
4. Differentiate between the chemistry of the team and the needs of the business
5. Beware of larger firms taking on smaller clients during the recession.
6. Issue a blanket RFP to a long list

Health Care Communicators Benefit From Up-Front Homework

Harris’ last point is particularly important to health care marketers in a hurry.  Sending out a flood of Requests for Proposals is like a carpet-bombing campaign: it destroys everything in it’s path.  Your up-front homework:

• Saves you internal staff time – by some estimates up to 40+ hours for a small to medium size RFP
• Allows you to focus only on those agencies already up to speed on your business and regulatory environment
• Preserves honor and goodwill.  If you invited them to bid you must read the proposals and take the meeting for the final presentation.

At Group 8020, we recommend issuing the RFP to just 3-4 agencies, any one of whom you’d be interested in working with.  Yes, it takes a little bit of effort but it pays off in longer term relationships.  In fact, 100% of the agencies selected by our clients have been invited back for repeat business; none of them required Group 8020 for that second round of work.  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Links:

• You can read Smarti’s full article here [open's PDF in new window].
• Link to Smarti Solutions corporate website

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As reported in “The Onion” and with holiday weekend implications, consumption of double stuff Oreos may lead to “tolerance”:

For 90 percent of Americans, it now takes twice as much stuf to reach the same level of satisfaction once achieved with a single layer of stuf,” the report read in part.

Health care practioners are bracing for the surge of new patients with “S.O.S” or “stuf Oreo syndrome.”. Read the full article here.

[By way of Amy Dangerously]

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1. Look at other web sites to develop a profile of your tastes for your project.
2. Figure out what color schemes you like and would be appropriate for your business or service.
3. Gather important images that will be part of your web site and design.
4. Decide on who will write your web site copy (the text on your pages).
5. Avoid excessive revisions by being clear about your project from the very beginning.

If you work in health care read the original article 5 Ways to Save Money When Working With a Web Designer and ask yourself:

What design element would you like to change on one of your web pages?

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The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that 61% of American adults look online for health information and continue to deepen their engagement with the online world.

• 41% of e-patients have read someone else’s commentary or experience about health or medical issues on an online news group, website, or blog.
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of doctors or other providers.
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of hospitals or other medical facilities.

Social networking sites are used only sparingly for health queries and updates

• 39% of e-patients use a social networking site like MySpace and Facebook
• 12% of e-patients use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others

Group 8020 suggests: Given the lack of FDA guidance for pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device manufacturers looking to engage in social media, this sparse interest is not surprising.  It does provide health care communicators with guidance, however, on allocating budget for social media marketing until such regulatory guidance is provided.

Positive self-help

• Half of all online health inquiries (52%) are on behalf of someone other than the person typing in the search terms.
• Two-thirds of e-patients talk with someone else about what they find online, most often a friend or spouse.

Online health inquiries have an impact on decisions or actions and there are clearly more positive experiences than negative ones. Fully 42% of all adults, or 60% of e-patients, say they or someone they know has been helped by following medical advice or health information found on the internet. This represents a significant increase since 2006 when 25% of all adults, or 31% of e-patients, said that.

Group 8020 suggests: Health care communicators may want to focus greater effort on the tools associated with sharing – “forward to a friend” links for example – to give existing content greater reach.

Exercise and fitness are hot

The percentage of American adults getting exercise and fitness information online has jumped from 21% in 2002 to 38% now – an 88% growth, a more rapid increase than any other health topic covered in the survey.

Group 8020 suggests: While the focus on fitness may be attributable in part to the recession, brands with a lifestyle story to tell would be well-advised to trot that content out.  Consider creating a YouTube channel of repurposed materials.

Mobile drives digital consumption

Wireless connections are associated with deeper engagement in social media and an accelerated pace of information exchange. adults between the ages of 18 to 49 are more likely than older adults to participate in social technologies related to health.

Group 8020 suggests: Asking your agency to validate your digital content for mobile browsers like iPhone’s Safari and Blackberry’s Web Browser.  The incremental cost to remedy any mobile access issues are minute compared to the gains you’ll achieve in engagement.

Links:

• Download the full report “Health, Mobile, Web 2.0 : The Social Life of Health Information” from Pew Internet [opens PDF in new window]
• Survey questions and methodology

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Semantic advertising is the marriage of content analysis with online advertising.  As first discussed last year ( The Semantic Web – Prove It to Yourself in 5 Minutes and What is the semantic web? Why do I want it?) semantic technologies are the bedrock tools and standards that enable the web to begin to both understand itself and to create meaning.

Semantic analysis of content provides advertisers with the opportunity to more finely tune ads through a robust understanding of the environment in which the ad is placed. This in turn would ideally generate higher click-through rates as consumers respond to increasingly more relevant ads.

The quality of the semantic advertising is a function of the:

1. algorithms used to derive semantic meaning from the web page
2. the ad network used to manage and deploy ad inventory

A quick way to get up to the speed is to look at some of the top players in the field (though this list is by no means exhaustive).

Who Are The Top Vendors for Semantic Advertising?

Vendor Name	Vendor Blurb	Tool
Apricot	Apricot. "Apricot crawls and processes publisher's and advertiser's web pages' content, analyzes these pages, finds keywords and identifies their functions and relationships in the sentence."	Contextual Analysis
CollectiveMedia	"Collective's renowned suite of targeting capabilities, our highly selective standards for advertising, and our advanced optimization not only yields the highest value for your inventory, we also elevate your brand with quality, relevant advertisers"	Targeting by Context
Hapax	Amplify. "Amplify is a web service that brings human understanding to content. By analysing content and returning its meaning in a usable and actionable structure, the Amplify platform enables advertisers, publishers and networks to take the guesswork out of brand safety, targeting and SEO online."	Contextual Analysis
Leiki	Leiki. "Leiki provides patented software technology that automatically targets advertising and personalises content and community services. The functionality is based on the most detailed automatic content analysis and real-time learning of the user's preferences."	Targeting by Context
LucidMedia	Click Sense. "ClickSense provides page-level contextual analysis that reads the web page of a potential impression and classifies it among our 14,000 categories to ensure it is appropriate for your advertiser's needs. "	Contextual Analysis
Maxifier	"Maxifier is the innovative new solution for publishers and ad networks who want to optimize the revenue from their online advertising inventory after campaigns have been launched."	Optimization
Proximic	Proximic. "Pattern Proximity - our patent-pending technology - to connect content, ads, and users with breakthrough precision in contextual matching and targeting. For both advertisers and publishers, it's essential to make the most accurate match - that's what Proximic is out to improve."	Proximity Analysis

Health care advertisers looking to drive traffic to unbranded, disease-awareness sites would benefit from a robust understanding of semantic advertising.

Buzzword Status Score

• Hype: Low
• Value: High
• Origin: Convergence of semantic technologies with online advertising best practices
• Timeframe: Worth your attention

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