Recently a friend of mine within the drug industry sent me the metrics for his website from his IT group. It consisted of 5 lines of data showing visitors, number of pages viewed and average number of visitors per day. When I asked him about more detailed data he responded with “that’s all I have”. Since this product is a $500 million drug I thought there would be more but this is one of the key reasons why pharma doesn’t get it and is not ready for the digital revolution.

Also…

It’s ironic that most pharma marketers won’t go to the bathroom with doing research yet when it comes to researching the development of online marketing they take a pass and usually the budget drives the strategy. Social media can be measured and those measurements can be translated in new Rx’s with data that is more believable than 5:1 ROI’s on TV spots. In order for web analytics to be meaningful they have to tell a story to marketers so that the lights go off and they ask “what if…”. The problem right now is that those lights are burned out and nobody wants to replace them.

[Federal Register: September 21, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 181)]
[Notices]
[Page 48083-48088]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr21se09-58]

———-

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Food and Drug Administration

[Docket No. FDA-2009-N-0441]

Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools; Notice of Public Hearing

AGENCY: Food and Drug Administration, HHS.

ACTION: Notice of public hearing; request for comments.

———-

SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), in collaboration with FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), and Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), is announcing a public hearing to discuss issues related to the promotion of FDA-regulated medical products (including prescription drugs for humans and animals, prescription biologics, and medical devices) using the Internet and social media tools. FDA is seeking participation in the public hearing and written comments from all interested parties, including, but not limited to, consumers, patients, caregivers, health care professionals, patient groups, Internet vendors, advertising agencies, and the regulated industry. This meeting and the written comments are intended to help guide FDA in making policy decisions on the promotion of human and animal prescription drugs and biologics and medical devices using the Internet and social media tools. FDA is seeking input on a number of specific questions but is interested in any other pertinent information participants in the hearing would like to share.

Must read. He takes a pretty pessimistic view. Basically, don’t expect FDA action any time soon and don’t expect any radical changes.

(via ePharma Rx)

A good read all the way through. He has advice for individual companies and for industry associations. And this:

At the FDLI conference held earlier this week in Washington, both Dr. Janet Woodcock and Tom Abrams affirmed that this is a priority for FDA. The scheduling of this meeting is a two-sided coin – on the one hand, there is a tremendous opportunity to help shape policy around the way industry and consumers can communicate; on the other hand, done badly, it will create yet one more obstacle not only for better marketing and bringing industry into an arena where patients are seeking more healthcare information than any other source, and may even result in the unintended consequence of impairing rather than supporting public health.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will hold a two-day public hearing in November on how pharmaceutical companies use the web and social-media tools to market their products, the first step in a long overdue process that will finally establish guidelines for how drug makers proceed in a Web 2.0 world.

And…

“It’s about time,” said an executive for one top-five pharmaceutical company who asked not to be identified. “Any guidance at all is better than having no guidance, which is what we have right now.”

Regulatory guidelines are now sorely lacking for direct-to-consumer spending by pharmaceutical companies using internet media.

And…

Ad agencies that specialize in health-care marketing say the hearings, and the likely implementation of set guidelines, are welcome news for pharma companies that, inherently, are already conservative by nature and have avoided doing much in the social media realm for fear of an FDA warning letter.

That pretty well sums up the conservative nature of the industry. The comments are informative, too.

Experts: Social Media Pose a Compliance Risk
Use of internet-based social media such as Facebook and Twitter can pose compliance risks for drug companies, experts agree. “It’s not the media but the message — and regulatory guidelines are as unclear for the agencies as for the industry,” Mark DeWyngaert, managing director of the Huron Consulting Group, said at the Food and Drug Law Institute’s 21st annual Advertising & Promotion Conference.

The full article is subscription-only, so I haven’t read it.

I’ll say this, though: Any time anyone who is employed by a drug (or device, or biotech) company opens their mouth, it’s a compliance risk. Plenty of companies have been slapped with huge fines over their marketing and sales practices. So they should be wary, and it’s obvious how letting the message get away from them through social media channels can be scary.

Now there is plenty of opportunity for companies to sell themselves instead of their products. They do this when they talk about the charities they support or the benefits they provide for their employees or the value they add to their respective communities or awesome things their employees have done. Push that message through social media channels.

In the mean time, I’d be happy to see the FDA expand its use of social media to get its message out.

Planet Money starts to dive into branded vs generic drug pricing, the insurance industry’s view on the pricing, the pharma industry’s view on the insurance industry’s view, and what that means for you when you’re standing at the drug store with a prescription in hand. It’s a little counter-intuitive.

Co-pays for prescription drugs are one of the ways health insurance companies try to contain costs. They make the generic cheaper than the brand name for you, the consumer, so you’ll chose the drug they have to pay less for.

It’s been a pretty effective system for years, but now the drug companies have come up with a way to get around it. They’re handing out “co-pay assistance cards,” which are basically like coupons for prescription drugs. They offer you up to $50 off the co-pay of a particular brand name drug, making the brand name effectively cheaper than the generic.

It may sound like a great deal for consumers, but John Rockoff, who reported the story for the Wall Street Journal, says the coupons come with some hidden costs.

Download this episode or subscribe to the Planet Money podcast.

Most importantly…

Among the technologies Examiner.com will adopt from NowPublic are its Emmy nominated real-time mechanism for scanning online conversations, world-class open source technology Drupal, and an enhanced publishing platform for Examiner.com contributors, who are projected to grow to over 30,000 by the end of the year.

And also…

In addition to the integration of NowPublic’s technology, Examiner.com will also actively recruit new Examiners from NowPublic, focusing specifically on NowPublic’s “professional amateur” contributors as well as its bevy of international writers, including its strong Canadian presence. NowPublic will also serve as a testing ground for new Examiner.com programs and ideas.

FYI…

About Examiner.com

Launched in April 2008, Examiner.com serves 109 markets across the country and is the insider source for everything local. Examiner.com’s content is contributed by Examiners; passionate, informed, and knowledgeable local influencers. Examiner.com is a division of the Clarity Digital Group, LLC, wholly owned by The Anschutz Company, a Denver-based investment company with a broad array of assets in print and digital media; live sports and entertainment; hospitality; film production and exhibition; wind energy development and transmission; as well as ranching and oil/gas exploration. For more information, visit Examiner.com.

About NowPublic

NowPublic is a crowd-sourced, participatory news network that mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In its short history, the company has become the largest news organization of its kind with contributing reporters in more than 6000 cities and 160 countries. The Guardian has named NowPublic.com one of the top five most useful news sites on the Web and TIME Magazine named it one of the Top 50 Websites for 2007. NowPublic Technologies Inc. is a Vancouver-based company. The company owns and operates NowPublic, which showcases its platform for citizen journalism.

“Points and badges are an incentive to get out to more and more places,” says Erica Mauter, a Minneapolis urban-culture expert at cinna.mn and fresh.mn. “It’s like putting new patches on your backpack or earning merit badges.”

Unfortunately, the link to this article at twincities.com is already dead and you have to pay for the text-only archive, but you may be able to access the Google cache of the article. Kaeti Hinck, the star of the photo in the article, snagged this photo of the print edition.

Many thanks to PiPress tech writer Julio Ojeda-Zapata for including me in his story.

I’ve rated about half of the 2200-ish submissions. I’ll describe my process and my general impressions of this year’s Panelpicker.

I love that they simplified the voting from the 5 star scheme to a simple up or down. It’s less thinking and it’s faster to vote. It may only take two less seconds to decide up/down vs 1-5, but multiply that times 2200! That’s over an hour of your life.

In evaluating the panel ideas, I consider the description first and foremost. I’m often finding that the “10 questions to be answered by the panel” give me much more info about the panel than the summary paragraph. That’s a lot of pages to click through since the 10 questions are only listed on the individual panel pages and not viewable from the list, but it’s worth it if you’re not entirely clear on the subject matter, or if you’re trying to distinguish the 20 panels on startups or telecommuting or social media strategies from each other.

I also consider the presenter. For example, if your panel is about universities/government/libraries and their use of social media, are from a university/government agency/library (yay)? Or are you a consultant (boo)? Are you from the same companies that present all the time? Are you one of those people that gets to present on what the hell ever because you have been presenting forever?

For someone who doesn’t do this professionally and doesn’t really want to, there’s a lot of this stuff I’ve seen before. If I’m completely uninterested in your topic, you get a thumbs down. This is probably PR/marketing stuff (no offense to my interactive PR/marketing friends, who are all really good at their jobs). I’m wondering if this is a reflection a larger percentage of conference newbies and/or crossover between technology and business as the concept of “interactive” broadens.

I’m generally avoiding any showdowns, smackdowns, or battles royale.

No solo presentations by people shilling their company’s products.

To be completely frank, if you’re someone other than a white guy, that’ll help you in my book. Because we need more of those.

The longer the Panelpicker is open, the more likely it is that comments have been left on panel pages. If you have 10 comments saying “great idea, so-and-so is a genius!” all that tells me is that you asked your friends to leave a comment. If you have two comments that include, say, further info from you about the topic or panelists or actual substantive comments on the topic (even criticism, suggested merges with other submitted panels, or questions (and answers!) about how a panel compares to other similar panels), that makes a difference.

What’s catching my eye this year, in general, are topics addressing the integration of technology into our every day lives (healthcare, government,
education, the environment, some but not all journalism topics, etc.) and topics addressing the intersection of techie-specific and general society cultural phenomena (digital divide, representation of the general population in technology development, technology/developer needs in libraries and newsrooms, etc.)

I love that this guy directly tackled a big complaint about SXSW programming: panels are submitted 8 months in advance and many aspects of technology move faster than that.

Overall, there is a lot of great stuff in here. It’s kind of a shame that only a small percentage of it will make it into the conference. At the same time, there’s some redundancy. I’m very pleased to see a lot more intermediate and advanced topics, both technical and social.

I’m probably not going to get to rating every single panel, but I’m heartened by what I see here. The following is a list of panels that made me say “Wow, cool!” or “Now that’s different.”

• Someone from Progressive Insurance presenting Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Designing an ePayment System.
• Someone from the Department of Health & Human Services talking about swine flu communications.
• The concept of Citizen Science.
• Blogging in the Pharmaceutical Industry although I had beef with the description because I wish they’d have said “pharma” in the header and summary instead of “healthcare. I never would have realized that’s what it was about and that’s a different conversation, I think, than technology in the healthcare industry.
• Another one on social media and the pharmaceutical industry, with the same beef as the previous one.
• One on teaching software development to prison inmates.
• How Geeks are Changing Finance. Because somebody needs to.
• Cultivating the Web: Netroots Action for Grassroots Food
• Tips from Urban Planning for Better .edu Design
• Using These Things Called Computers to Overhaul Universities
• Someone from the Houston Public Library presenting on how to “use social media for crisis communications and influence civic decision making.”
• What Guys are Doing to Get More Girls in Tech! Doing something good with that privilege.
• Generating B2B Leads Through Social Media: What’s Next? Discussion of B2B seems really underdeveloped.
• Map Your Bands: Map App Itinerizes SXSW Watch this presentation, learn about the app, and then use it when you stay for SXSW Music. Meta!
• Balancing the Only Virtual Economy Backed by $USD
• When the Cloud #FAILs: Is Your Data Safe? The question we’re all asking as cloud computing is the way of the future.
• Banking 2.0: Financial Services Driven by People & Emerging Technologies P2P lending is getting huge.
• Slashing Through Red-Tape to Revolutionize Corporate Communication Presented by Southwest Airlines, a more “traditional” company.
• One on technology and diplomacy, answer the question “How are governmental agencies such as DoS and DoD using new and social media to advance their diplomatic agendas?” amongst others.
• Internet Toaster 2.0: The Smart Grid Experience Smart Grids are also the way of the future, if we could just figure out how to implement them without spending redonkulous dollars that we don’t have.
• One on the growing “music for media” market. I hadn’t heard the term before but it makes perfect sense.
• Selling Subculture Without Selling Out Tricky!
• Becoming An Inspiration – One Pixel At A Time “Reggie Bibbs has been a one man crusade to raise awareness for neurofibromatosis (NF) come listen to him tell his story and help you and your organization turn your clients and friends into raving fans for your company or group.” WOW.
• Beyond Tokenism: How Social Media Can Fix S*** OMG, yes. It’s labeled as a beginner level topic, but I think the premise itself is intermediate at least.
• How Technology Is Altering Our Brain as presented by someone from Scientific American.
• The Politics and Economics of Digital Identities There are so many good things in here I don’t even know where to start. Identity, reputation, privacy, surveillance, profit.
• Bumpin’ Up: Has The Glass Ceiling Ever Smacked You In The Butt? as presented by Women Who Tech with a bunch of powerful, internet famous women on the panel.
• RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online
• Is The Brain The Ultimate Computer Interface?
• Engaging The Queer Community This topic is so not as straightforward as you’d like to think.
• Lost In Translation: The Nuances Of European Social Media Because we like to think they’re enough like us.
• Nerds on the Run: Tech and Casual Fitness from the creator of the C25K running program of which I am a graduate! I know I’ve tried multiple fitness-related iPhone apps.
• The Secret Lives of Online Quizzes They’re harvesting data about you! Interestingly, presented by the ACLU.

In the mean time, I’m-a need the good folks at SXSW to get cracking on the session podcasts from this year’s festival.

UPDATED: Chris Penn proposes removing all identifying information about the presenters as a solution to the perceived “popularity contest” issue inherent to the Panelpicker, under the theory that the content should stand alone. He makes a great point, but as I mentioned above, the identity of the presenter does have an impact. (And I do have friends who submitted panels that I voted for.) I’m sure the fine folks at SXSW are well aware of this and this is part of the reason why Panelpicker results are only 30% of total panel picking formula.

The pharmaceutical industry, like many other sectors seeking a way to stay viable in a world where customers are becoming ever more elusive (um, like maybe journalism?), is dipping its toes into the brave new world of social media. At a small meeting room at the Madison Hotel today, a group of attendees heavy on public relations and drug company employees brainstormed about the possibilities of using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to get the word out about their products, or maybe about a particular condition, and connect with the end users: physicians and patients.

There’s a big catch for drug makers, however. The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t really determined where these communications fit into its regulatory scheme. Mark Gaydos, a senior director of regulatory affairs at Sanofi-Aventis, said he is heading a somewhat informal task force of representatives from 5 drug makers seeking to create voluntary guidelines on the industry’s use of social media. The companies have already been talking with the FDA’s division of drug marketing, advertising and communications about their efforts, Mr. Gaydos said.

Biggest problem is they’re usually thinking of social media in terms of how can they market and sell, not how can they build relationships with doctors and patients. While such companies often expound this patient-first focus, I’m not convinced that their actions are always congruent with this professed corporate value. They are public, for-profit companies, after all.

But, yeah, these are murky waters. I hope there is someone who actually knows something about social media involved in these talks. Expecting a bunch of senior executives to come up with a policy, when I’m pretty sure they’re not the most knowledgeable folks about the medium, is asking for… maybe not disaster, but certainly something ineffective and meaningless.

I’d love to be the person at FDA in charge of developing the agency’s social media strategy and guidelines for regulated industries to follow.

(via @RichardAult)

Ten Money Questions for Erica Mauter

• Jeremy Iggers, executive director of the Twin Cities Media Alliance which, among other things, publishes the Twin Cities Daily Planet, a premier online resource for access to community and ethnic media
• Lynnell Mickelsen, cohost of KFAI’s Truth to Tell
• Laura Waterman-Wittstock, a former journalist, author, advocate for the American Indian community, and host of KFAI’s First Nations Radio
• Mike McIntee, executive producer for The Uptake

Nick Coleman opened the program with his remarks and took some questions, and then we each had the opportunity to respond to his comments and take more audience questions.

I have several points that I try to make whenever I participate in this discussion.

• Young people and old people consume their news in fundamentally different ways. This is often overlooked and misunderstood by older journalists, even though they are making valiant efforts to adapt.
• I know the words “blog” and “blogger” have a particular connotation and those terms are often used condescendingly and with disdain. It’s very important to make the distinction between the message and the medium. Blogs are a legitimate platform for self-publication.

The discussion mainly centered around the changes in newspapers (and, to a lesser extent, journalism in general). In short, the increasing emphasis on short-term profit by disinterested ownership and dwindling editorial cojones have resulted in the newspapers of today, such as they are.

One thing missing from the conversation was the fundamentally different way in which younger folks consume media in general and news in particular. Putting aside the specifics of the whizbang new media tools of the day, the fact is that we consume our news by reading it on the internet (desktop/laptop/mobile) or by listening to it on the radio (live, or time-shifted via podcast). We attempt to moderate the massive information flow for ourselves by depending on recommendations from our friends or being extremely selective about the sites we consume.

Related to that, technology significantly influences our consumption. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the actual digital delivery. I think there’s even more opportunity in non-disruptive payment mechanisms. I’m willing to concede the fact that eventually we may all have to pay to consume news online. In the interim, make it dead simple for me to send voluntary micropayments for acts of journalism that I do find worth my time. I’d like to see these on a per-article or per-author basis. Within iTunes or within Amazon, it’s frighteningly easy to spend money. Make it equally as simple for me to throw a tip to journalism I appreciate in a targeted way.

I had a personal revelation not long ago when it came to buying iPhone applications. There are so many free apps out there, it makes you think that you should be able to get what you want without having to pay for it. But what I get out of that one app I paid $3 for was completely worth the money. I spend way more than $3 on a regular basis without even thinking. It’s a paradigm shift to learn to attach value to journalism in the same way.

Further reading:

• In These Times: Death of the Newspaperman, by David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of HBO’s The Wire
• Newsless.org: The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get, by Matt Thompson
• spot.us, a community-funded reporting project in which users request reporting on a topic, journalists pitch a story, users pitch in to fund the reporting, and the resulting work is available for publishing under a Creative Commons license
• LazyLightning.org, an example of a superb cityblog (covering the Twin Cities South Metro) produced by engaged citizen Bill Roehl who does it because he loves it and thinks it’s important

My thanks to KFAI News Director Ahndi Fridell for asking me to participate.

The Scientist has reported that, yes, it’s true, Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.

(via @Amanda_Rudelt)

Until the recent implementation of FDA’s inspection program under the new dietary supplement GMP (good manufacturing practice) regulation, perhaps the greatest change in agency inspectional procedures in the previous decade was the adoption of the principle that if your facility was operating, it was subject to inspection—even if the “management” was not on premises….

As the dietary supplement GMPs have begun rolling into effect, FDA has commenced implementation of its GMP inspection program. These inspections represent far more than a change in agency procedure; they are a sea change in the manner in which supplement manufacturers interact with investigators.

So, basically, manufacturers of supplements are now subject to inspection at the same level of scrutiny as drug and biologic manufacturers. Read the whole article for a brief description of what such an inspection entails.

(via @ChangeNetwork)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has nearly doubled the number of inspectors in its Minneapolis office over the past year, marking a rebuilding of its local presence.

The FDA’s Minneapolis District Office now employs about 61 inspectors, up from around 34 last year. The hirings will help the agency recover from a recent wave of retirements, but also could mean some additional hassles for Twin Cities companies it regulates, as new, less-experienced inspectors are trained in.

From Google’s tips on using AdSense in feeds:

Include the full content of your feed in your posts. Including more content increases subscribers, which in turn increases the number of impressions you serve into your feed. Though you might think this will reduce clicks to your site, our experience has shown this isn’t always the case. Often, the audience reading your feed is a separate audience from those who visit your site, so we encourage you to monetize your audience of feed readers separately.

So there. The monetary aspect of it is one thing, but the separation of your audience is the bigger issue, IMO. There are other things you might need to worry about besides ad placement to serve those separate audiences.

Of course Steve Pavlina, who just dropped his six figures worth of AdSense advertising all together, would say differently. If you’re making money, it ought to be because of the value you provide, not just the traffic you generate. Those are related, but not the same.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata, in his latest Maynard Institute column, broke down the behind-the-scenes-in-plain-view goings on at the MPR Ethics in Online Journalism forum that Greg and I liveblogged for Ye Olde Metblog.