Notes from the Healthcare Blogging Summit: Marketing Panel

This panel's full title is "Using New Media to Market (or Motivate?) Behavioral Change -- Practical Lessons from High-Profile Cases." Participants include:

• Fabio Gratton, Ignite Health
• Adam Pellegrini, American Cancer Society
• Debbie Donovan, Conceptus
• Moderator: Nedra Weinreich, Weinreich Communications

Nedra noted that the concept of "social marketing" predates it's use to describe marketing via social media. Her company uses social marketing to persuade individuals to take action for health or social change by addressing the values, needs and desires that motivate them. She works through non-profit organizations.

Fabio discussed how his company has leveraged blogs. He has built a series of blog networks in specific disease states. www.HepB.tv is a pharmaceutical company sponsored patient video blog that Fabio created. Fabio has some interesting ideas and has done some creative things online. I hope to interview him soon in an upcoming Pharma Marketing Talk podcast. Stay tuned for that!

Fabio learned that self-esteem and ego were powerful drivers that motivate bloggers, more so than accumulating points that can be redeemed for music downloads.

Debbie Donovan blogs in the medical device space -- "Diary of a Decision: The Essure Procedure." Her company created a persona, "Judy", so that visitors can "Ask Judy" questions. This simple device dramatically increased the number of questions submitted daily. Patient stories on her site are there to help women see what other woman who have undergone the procedure are saying and feeling.

Adam Pellegrini talked about ACS's "Relay for Life" website, which hosts 8,000 bloggers. "Your really don't know what your users want, unless you know who your users are," said Adam. Metrics are important. Go ask Jim Edwards -- BrandweekNRX continues to poll its users. ACS will never replace its editorial content, which is well-trusted, with user-generated content. But it is working on integrating the two sources of content.

Notes from the Healthcare Blogging Summit: Open Healthcare Panel

It's 10:30 AM and only 25 people are in the room -- approximately half of them are presenters. It seems that blogging is an East Coast phenom!

The first panel in the morning addressed open healthcare issues for corporations. The panel participants included:

• Matthew Holt, The Healthcare Blog
• Nicholas Jacobs, Windber Medical Center and Research Institute
• Elisa Cooper, Whistleblower, formerly with Kaiser Permanente (see "Kaiser Permanente sues blogger over patient information")
  
• Bob Coffield, Flaherty, Sensbaugh & Bonasso
• Moderator: Dmitriry Kruglyak, TrustedMD

I guess this is about how corporations cab manage and minimize crises created by blogs, like Question Authority vs. Astrazeneca.

Bob of the Health Care Law Blog summarized some of the legal issues.

Lawyers love the brave new world of blogging and open healthcare, said Bob.

Blogger Law 101
What bloggers should be aware of. Includes copyright and use of trademarks; asserting and defending defamation (libel/slander); can you be held liable for comments published on your blog? liability for publishing private facts with no legitimate public purpose (especially important in healthcare); employees rights to blog (public employees have more rights); "whistle-blogging (protecting employees who reveal illegal acts by employers); blogging the violates company policy (blogging policies are becoming more prevalent).

Corporate approach to blogging: should be treated similar to email; protect business secrets, "be nice."

Role Playing Exercise
A blogger breaks news that is potentially damaging to a hospital -- Lisa will play that role. How would a hospital CEO respond, general counsel. Dmitriry is a reporter.

How does the CEO feel about it? because of regulation, healthcare companies try to "stay under the radar" rather than deal with issues with candor and full disclosure (ie, transparency).

Note: Several panel members suggested scenarios involving Matthew Holt as in "suppose Matthew is a disgruntled employee and decides to..." or "suppose Matthew is ripping off your copyright material ..."

Elisa suggested that someone may become an "aggressive" blogger because they don't have access to lawyers and other resources that the corporation has at its disposal. But sometimes, bloggers (eg, Peter Rost) has access to both blogs and lawyers. It's an issue that may involve the "digital divide" that Jay Bernhardt discussed. As more disenfranchised people gain access to blogging, there may be a lot more bloggers that are aggressive towards the corporate healthcare industry, especially patients who were "wronged" or employees that see their organizations engaged in questionable, if not illegal, practices.

Journalism vs. Blogging
"From a reporter's perspective," said Dmitriry, "blogs are a great source for stories." He used Lisa' blog attacks against Kaiser Permanente as an example. He suggested the truism: Don't do anything that would not want to see reported in the Wall Street Journal. I would change that these days to: don't do anything you would like to see in the blogosphere! Astrazeneca's Zubillaga Affair is an excellent example. It was Peter Rost who "broke" the story, not the WSJ. And Astrazeneca had to react to his revelations, not a story in the WSJ.

The press has "buckets of ink," said Jacobs, "we don't go after them or write letters to the Editor." But bloggers don't need no stinkin' ink! They have "buckets of bits" and access to Youtube as well!

Moderation
Bob suggested that the less moderation of comments you do, the less liable you are, legally even though the law has recently changed to give the same rights to bloggers as ISPs with regard to comments. Dmitriry suggests that you moderate comments, you should have a policy that explains how comments are moderated in every case.

My panel is next (I will talk about the Pharma Blogosphere Survey). So, I won't be able to blog about that in real time.

Notes from the Healthcare Blogging Summit: Jay Bernhardt, CDC

The Summit got off to a late start due to a scheduling mix up and at 9 AM, attendance was sparse! Hopefully, it will pick up as the day goes on.

I am writing this and posting as the day goes on...

Jay Berhardt, MD, Centers for Disease Control, gave a keynote presentation. spoke on Social Networks and New Media for Health in the 21st Century. Jay is the Director of the CDC's National Center for Health Marketing. Jay is also a blogger (see Director's Blog).

DISCLAIMER: The following is a synopsis of jay's personal views, not CDC policy.

The government is not tracking the digital divide as well as it once did. This is a key concern when we talk about new media and help.

US is 15th out of 30 developed countries in terms of broadband access -- about 20% of Americans subscribe to broadband, whereas countries in Europe are at about 30% adoption. This also has implications for health-related social policy adoption.

Is social media affecting health? Yes, says Bernhardt, but not easily quantified today. Especially if measured by better health outcomes -- no evidence that we are healthier today because of the Internet.

How can social media revolutionize health (not healthcare, but health)?

Social media cannot overcome a problem with your genes. What about using SM to change our environment? Yes, there is a lot of activity in this sphere -- social justice, equity of access, and opportunities, etc.

Social Media and Decision Support -- social media can increase the impact of information to inform healthy decisions.

Health is a social construct -- e.g., "people like me" are most trusted according to the Edelman Trust Baromter. No demographically the same, but have the same opinions, etc.

To succeed, social media must be BIG on the 3 P's and 3 E's: Personalized, Participatory, Presentations (ubiquitous content through multiple channels), Engaging, Entertaining, Emotional. Need to engage in these E's if you want to cut through the clutter.

Product placement in RSS Feeds is coming! "It's there now," shouted out several people in the audience.

Jay cited a couple of examples: fluwiki, organizedwisdon

What's CDC doing? Jay defines marketing as delivery of value to consumers. Goal is to have consumers actively use information in such a way to improve health.

His marketing group uses podcasts, RSS, E-Cards, Webinars and blogs, graphical bugs, E-games (toe in the water), widget (very big into this). A good model is the field of financial services, which is far ahead to the health industry in adopting these technologies.

What About Future?
Health-related social media will continue to grow.

Information credibility is harder to judge these days. Trusted experts will have a resurgence. Sources like CDC and clinicians that "I know."

CAUTION: the health information divide is continuing to grow as well. Mobile media may help bridge the gap. 2.5 billion people live within mobile access spots, even though they may not own a mobile device. People have a relationship with their mobile devices.