Comments on: Monitoring Adverse Events in Social Media for Pharma’s Biggest Brands: Hopeless Task or Simple Project?

By: The Beginner's Guide to Pharma Social Media | Dose of Digital - Digital Marketing in Pharma and Healthcare

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:45:16 +0000

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By: Facilitating Communications in Social Media – Pfizer, Epocrates, FDA and NIH | Pharma Marketer

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:31:46 +0000

[...] the introduction and rapid uptake of social media, the issue adverse event reporting has been a source of concern among many in industry. [...]

By: Francisco Almodóvar

Francisco Almodóvar — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:08:03 +0000

Thanks Jon for your job. In Spain we don´t have at the moment discussion about monitoring adverse events in social media for pharma brands. It is very interesting in two ways: pharmacovigilance and marketing (to see through your customers eyes).

Thanks again

By: Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:01:24 +0000

Thanks, Jess. At least half the credit (probably more) goes to Melissa for this post. She also did the thinking around what other reasons there could be for monitoring. Glad you found it useful.

By: Jess Seilheimer

Jess Seilheimer — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:19:50 +0000

Best point: “Companies need to determine what and why they are monitoring. This means determining if you’ll monitor only your sites or which 3rd party sites as well. Finding adverse events isn’t the only reason. Correcting misinformation, understanding patient needs, and engaging in dialogue (e.g., answering questions) are also reasons.”

Continuous thanks for always putting together a solid POV and disseminating relevant info for us all to learn from, and apply accordingly.

By: Melissa Davies

Melissa Davies — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:14:08 +0000

@John Mack: Nielsen BuzzMetrics collects Yahoo! and Google groups, and those conversations were included in this AE research. In fact, the 1 message we did find that had all four FDA reporting criteria was from a Google group (which is why it contained the poster’s e-mail address and therefore an identifiable reporter). If someone is running a private listserv application via their own server, we do not capture that discussion.

By: Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:26:11 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Rohit. Totally agree with you. Monitoring for AEs isn’t at all making use of the space. Understanding what your customers (patients) want and need should be the real motivation. I hope that this post let’s people see that they can start to do this without fear that they’ll be overwhelmed with AEs to manage. If they can get past this, then we can start to talk about what it is they should be doing. From correcting misinformation to answering questions about their brands online, I think pharma can play an important role without turning it into a promotional channel. Maybe removing the AE objection once and for all is what we need to get to the next step.

By: Rohit

Rohit — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:14:47 +0000

Thanks Jon for yet another post to help get the industry past this debate that is consuming far too much time and resource about AEs online. The interesting thing about this is that in most other industries, the reason for brands to actively monitor social media in the first place is to identify places where they can join the conversation. Given how far most Pharma brands are from that state, even if they DO choose to monitor social media … perhaps the real take home message should be not to let the fear of AEs keep you from monitoring conversations about a DISEASE CONDITION. In many cases, I would argue that the insights a brand can gain by listening to what people are saying and asking about dealing with high cholesterol, or diabetes, or fibromyalgia is far more useful than looking at mentions of a specific brand. In other words – when it comes to social media monitoring, shouldn’t we be focused on the forest instead of the trees?

By: John Mack

John Mack — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:47:41 +0000

What about discussions taking place on email listservs that are not indexed by search engines? Does Nielsen look at these too? .-= John Mack´s last blog ..Will Pharma Spend More on eMarketing than on TV Advertising by 2019? =-.