Tag: health

Five tough questions to ask your web project team

We can all make digital brand investments more valuable. It all starts with asking the right questions:

  1. What does it look like on the computer in my pocket?
    Accessing the web via mobile is the new game-changing trend. Smart phone sales are up 30% year over year; they’re expected to beat out global PC sales within the next three years. Think of all the places people are seeing your brand where going online to find out more would be infinitely easier on a handheld than with a laptop? Conventions halls, waiting rooms, conversations over coffee. You don’t want them to end up just seeing this:

  2. What do we want people to pass on?
    You’ve probably got a call-to-action written into your strategy, but what about a call to share? Half of all online health searches are done on behalf of someone else.  And two-thirds of us talk with someone else about what we find online. What do you want your visitors to say?
  3. What is our site telling Google about us?
    Ok, maybe your search engine of choice is Bing. Still, you should know what your site is saying to the spiders as well as the masses. Talk about what steps to take to optimize the site. Cover all the bases: what’s in the words, what’s tucked in the code and where do you pass your content on?
  4. How will people engage with us?
    Everyone is chasing after that metric – what does it mean for a consumer to engage with us? For our purposes, let’s say it means more than reading a carefully-curated digital museum. Put aside the Tetris-like sitemap and think people for a minute. What’s the experience should they have? Where can they interact with your brand or each other? (And, no, a contact form doesn’t count)
  5. What do we have the opportunity to own in search?
    What’s the competitive field look like? Who’s winning on what search terms? This is where the digital strategists come in. Those curious people who are utterly fascinated by microsegments and use paths and comparative data. They can tell you where the open spaces are and what content strategy to take to make them your own.
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Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | February 23rd, 2010 | 0 Comments

Can your brand spark a cause?

Nonprofits have known a certain truth for decades: People don’t emotionally connect to institutions; they connect with causes they can believe in. That simple human instinct has spurred all manner of discreet causes and events – from a thank your librarian day to the international AIDS quilt project. All because they know that people connect more with that feeling of progess, of acting with purpose than they do with a named institution (like the library).

Healthcare brands have a unique opportunity to create or sponsor causes in the digital space.  Lasting events or flash memes that inspire supporters to pass them on. It’s an approach that’s uniquely social because it adds value and gives back to the community. And is entirely strategic because it focuses attention on an opportunity or problem relevant to the brand.

Our favorite example? World Contraception Day. The cause was founded in 2007 by Bayer Schering Pharma to reduce the high levels of unintended pregnancy around the world. They gathered NGO partners and invested in both DTC and HCP marketing. For consumers, there were events, a digital homebase, and a whole lot of buzz.

Outreach to HCPs focused on materials to share with patients and key statistics about the rate and consequences of unintended pregnancies.

The day has a theme each year – like understanding your choices or making your voice heard. And, it intentionally brings in the voices of real people, mostly young people, who are most impacted by unintended pregnancy.

Every September 26, Bayer Schering Pharma makes an impact. In incredibly social, generous, and smart ways.

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Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | February 11th, 2010 | 0 Comments

UCB joins PatientsLikeMe

After months of planning, UCB officially launched an epilepsy community on PatientsLikeMe last month. In the first two weeks, over 400 patients joined. Based on the growth of other communities, they expect thousands of patients to connect there over the next few months.

What is PatientsLikeMe?

PatientsLikeMe is part databank, part community. It has the most comprehensive content on certain mood and neurological disorders of any databank in history. And, it was all crowdsourced – entered by individual patients one visit at a time.

The site was started by two brothers – James Heywood and Benjamin Heywood – after watching their brother Benjamin’s long battle with ALS. They were frustrated that the doctors they saw has so few ALS patients and so narrow a perspective. They hoped that if they could bring enough people together, each entering their own specific medical experience – they could not only help these people with relatively rare life-changing conditions support one another, but also help them act as their own advocates in their treatment and their lives.

Why did UCB invest?

PatientsLikeMe is on-the-ground research with a wide-cross section of patients. People who record how they feel, what medication they take, and what they do on their own to improve their quality of life. UCB is hoping what it learns about epilepsy will help improve drug safety and lead to new advances in care.

UCB’s chief medical officer Iris Loew-Friedrich said: “We believe this community will be a source of information that will allow us to better understand people living with epilepsy and may help us design clinical programs that incorporate real-world patient needs and experiences in a measurable way.”

UCB has ambitious plans for the partnership and has outlined a number of research projects in the pipeline, including one that takes aim at the specter of adverse events – long the cause of pharma caution on any form of social networking.

Want to hear more from the founders of PLM?

Don’t miss this TED talk by Jamie Heywood. He goes deep on how and why the system works.

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Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | February 5th, 2010 | 0 Comments

Your personal nutrition label

At one Oregon-based burger joint, everything is custom – right down to the calorie count.

Teaming up with a company called Nutricate, Burgerville prints recepits that show both the wallet and waistline cost of each customer’s meal.

They’re able to do this by dividing certain meals into their component parts. Based on what a customer orders, they can show the total calorie count plus where their ordering decisions saved or cost them calories along with personal tips on what to order next time.

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Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | February 3rd, 2010 | 0 Comments

Online video is essential to health searchers

We’ve all seen the headlines that suggest that the majority (perhaps the overwhelming majority) of Americans go online to look up health information. But how many are researching information about prescription drugs specifically?

A new study from Manhattan Research looks at just that valuable group. Their numbers have tripled over the past five years and now stand at more than 100 million consumers, or 44% of U.S. adults. Based on the growth pattern, they expect it to include the majority of Americans by 2012.

What type of content is most useful to them? The research uncovers two key things:

  1. Video: Almost half of these pharma researchers watched health videos online in 2009 and many condition groups, such as patients with diabetes, show strong interest in using this media format to educate themselves about their condition in the future. They like to find these videos inline with other health content and don’t tend to seek them out on YouTube or other video hubs.
  2. Condition sites: These unbranded sites that prompt consumers to take the next step in their treatment are are even more likely to drive consumers to seek condition or treatment information after the visit than product websites. But both are something of a holy grail for consumers requesting a prescription drug by name from their doctor. They help seekers feel more informed and ready to act as their own advocate in the exam room.
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Leigh Householder, VP/Managing Director of Innovation Strategy | February 2nd, 2010 | 0 Comments

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