Coming out of the esteemed yCombinator startup program is DrChrono, an ipad application and electronic health record (EHR) platform for doctors. The program helps physicians organize patient appointments, send prescriptions electronically and handle medical billing. All records are updated in real time and are stored in HIPPA compliant data storage. While some doctors still use paper files, others are using laptops and neither are as streamlined in a small package as the DrChrono application. Read Full Entry
According to the New York Times over the weekend, some Conde Nast magazines are getting tablet-worthy apps for the iPad launched this year.
GQ in April.
Vanity Fair and Wired in June.
Glamour and The New Yorker in summer.
For the savvy pharma marketing media planner, expect premium prices for this new tablet magazines – or “tablet-zines” (because “Pad-zine” sounds like a takout Chinese dish) but be wary: these folks don’t know how to use this medium and have not shown the ability to use technology.
At least not yet. Maybe ever.
So buyers beware of premium-priced iPad “tablet-zines” this summer sold with a “gotta have it” sales pitch from the high end magazines.
At the Mobile Congress in Barcelona last week, shoemaker Puma launched a new Puma Phone to appeal to the on-the-go, healthy lifestyle of their target consumers.
Hmmm. A branded “lifestyle” phone?
Think the Viagra phone is far away?
While it’s easy to say it will “never happen in pharma,” the rapid changes in mobile adoption around the world suggest that, perhaps, anything could happen. As the technology gets less expensive, global mobile adoption has exploded, blurring the roles of function, entertainment, brand and marketing.
If 5 years ago someone had predicted that the bookseller Amazon would one day have its own line of computers it would have seemed far fetched, right? But now there’s Kindle: a branded product (software) on an emerging technology (tablet).
The good news for pharma: sometimes being later to market is better.
Technology companies know they learn as much from going through the launch of a new technology (tablet, mobile, etc.) as they did developing the product in the first place. That knowledge becomes “the bigger part” of theie intellectual property (IP). The experience of doing it first, or early, becomes the competitive advantage, not just the software, or device. Early adopters have experienced more earlier, so they figure out how to avoid the mistakes for version 2.0 (in software).
For pharma it will be the second version of their tablet application, or mobile device app that translates to success, because the IP gathered from the first version will have taught those brand managers what works, what doesn’t and (drum roll) why it worked.
