Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16879

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Government Document

Lewis-Hall FC
Promotion of FDA-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools
National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center 2009 Nov 12
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/DrFredaLewis-Hall.pdf

Full text:

Hello, I’m Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, Chief Medical Officer for Pfizer.
My responsibility at Pfizer-a responsibility shared by all of my colleagues-is to ensure
the safe and effective use of Pfizer medicines and vaccines.
I appreciate the opportunity to return to Washington, where I trained to be a physician
and spent many years working in both research and in frontline patient care.
You’ve heard from many experts today, so I will keep my message short and sweet given
that I am keeping you from the weekend and I will focus this discussion on how researchbased
pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, can use social media to help doctors
help their patients.
Yesterday and today you have heard a lot about how the use of the Internet and social
media has become routine for patients and caregivers, what you may not realize is how
important this medium has become for doctors
According to Manhattan research, 9 in 10 U.S. physicians surveyed agreed that the
Internet has become essential to their practice.
In fact, the average physician spends roughly eight hours a week using the internet for
professional purposes.
Some 87% of physicians already interact with drug and device companies online, and
that’s up 23% since 2004.
And physician interest in participating in online communities has increased dramatically,
with 60% of physicians saying that they are or have an interest in participating in social
networks…and 56% saying they would like to engage with healthcare companies through
social media.
Add to this is the explosion in so-called smart phones…mobile phones that are
seamlessly connected to the internet. Two out of three doctors already have smart phones.
By 2012, more than four out of five will carry them.
All this means that the Internet and social media present tremendous opportunities to help
ensure that doctors use our medicines safely and effectively. Those who develop
medicines can now interact more quickly, conveniently, and completely, with those who
prescribe them.
One of the more novel ways that we now communicate with physicians is through social
media, specifically through our collaboration with Sermo, a physician-only social
network.
As you have heard, Sermo is a Web-based community of over 111,000 doctors,
representing almost 20% of all US physicians.
Doctors come to Sermo to share observations from daily practice, discuss emerging
trends and provide new insights into medications, devices and treatments.
It is the online equivalent of the physicians’ lounge, where informal but highly valuable
consults traditionally take place.
We’ve discovered very rapidly that our expectations of how doctors engage in this
space…and how doctors actually engage in this space…are very different.
We know from our longstanding experience with doctors that they appreciate scientific
information from companies such as Pfizer when they believe that this information is
relevant to them.
Last year, we decided to try a technology from Sermo that allowed us to make
information available, right away, to doctors when they were discussing a relevant topic
on Sermo.
For example, on the screen is a post where physicians are discussing the co-morbidity of
fibromyalgia and depression with their peers. The topic triggers the availability of a
fibromyalgia webcast sponsored by Pfizer, shown on the right side of the screen
Doctors could then access this information if they chose to do so.
We figured… “Offer it and they will come”…but we were wrong. In this space, doctors
did not want information pushed at them this way.
After numerous experiments, we got the point. In the social media space, doctors are not
interested in what they regard as “canned content”…even if that content was effectively
deployed in more traditional channels.
So we went back to the drawing board and spent a good deal of time understanding what
doctors expected in this space.
These expectations were clearly different than those of the “off-line” world. The first
thing we learned was that we need to provide a more in-depth level of interaction, closer
to real-time two-way dialogue.
When doctors have questions of companies like Pfizer, they prefer direct access to our
medical experts so they can engage in peer-to-peer scientific exchange in an open,
unbiased manner.
They also want around-the-clock access to us, because doctors don’t just practice during
traditional office hours.
What we learned is that we can’t force-fit the old one-way communication style into this
new medium.
Physicians are using this space to actively seek health information. It is an environment
where they are clearly in control.
Based on what we heard from physicians, we knew we needed to work with Sermo to
design a tool that allowed physicians to quickly obtain scientific information from our
medical experts but do it in a manner that was compliant with regulations. This lead us to
design a tool called AskRx.
AskRx allows a doctor to submit a medical inquiry instantaneously to Pfizer’s medical
information department.
We commit to getting back to that doctor in less than 24 hours with a scientific response
that is customized and concise. The doctor then has the ability to share the question and
Pfizer’s response to Sermo’s broader physician community and to solicit peer feedback.
Although AskRx was a pilot that we conducted with just a handful of Pfizer medicines,
we found that doctors were delighted with their experience with AskRx. In a follow-up
survey, 73% of AskRx users stated that this access to Pfizer experts was valuable…95%
found our responses to be scientific and credible…and all of them stated they would
consider using AskRx again.
We are now looking to expand this service offering to physicians’ smart phones , so we
can give doctors immediate access to our medical experts right at the point of patient
care.
We’ve clearly seen from our experience that social media is a different animal. It does
not operate in the same way as other traditional communication channels.
Based on our research with physicians, plus the experience that I just shared, we now
know that doctors expect transparency, speed, convenience and custom tailored
approaches in answering even the most complex medical questions.
They don’t want to be TALKED AT…they want to engage in a dialogue, but they want
to initiate that dialogue and keep control over it.
We’ve all heard a lot in the past two days, but at the end it all comes back to this big
question: “How do we meet the health information needs of consumers, patients and
professionals in a new environment that is changing literally by the hour?”
We’re all learning “on the go”…but we feel by working together we can realize the
tremendous potential of this channel to effectly improve patient care.
This meeting is a positive step in figuring out how we do that…and how the FDA should
regulate the use of this space.
I ask that you sustain the momentum and continue to listen to a range of expert
voices…such as industry, agency, technology partners, patient advocates, and thought
leaders.
Based on what I have heard over the last two days, I see some common themes.
This space is nothing like what we have seen in the offline world and requires specific
guidance for the online space.
This guidance needs to be broad and flexible given the rapidly evolving nature of this
space.
And lastly, we have seen that the informational needs among HCPs and consumers vary
dramatically and it would be ideal to have specific guidelines for each.
In this presentation, I have only scratched the surface of Pfizer’s experience in this area.
Please let us know what additional knowledge gaps that you may have as we may have
the experience and data to help fill these gaps.
I look forward to continuing this dialogue, and again, thank you for your time and
attention.