2011

Pfizer's US corporate Facebook page was hacked by some 'Kiddies.' What should the industry learn from this experience?

The pharmaceutical industry has been very generous in making payments to physicians. Last year (2010), for example, a mere dozen pharmaceutical companies paid $760 million to physicians and other health care providers for consulting, speaking, research and expenses. On average, how much do you think that comes to for every physician in the U.S.?

Despite dire predictions of 'PR failure,' the #rxsave Twitter chat hosted by @AstraZenecaUS on 15 February 2011 was a great success, which is pharma social media speak for 'did not crash and burn.' It was proof that a pharmaceutical company can indeed host meaningful Twitter chats.

Pharmaceutical marketers have jumped on the mobile application bandwagon as more and more companies roll out health-related applications for smartphones and touchpads such as Apple's iPhone and iPad. But will the FDA regulate certain smartphone apps as medical devices? This article discusses the regulatory and other issues associated with pharma developed or sponsored health apps.

More and more pharmaceutical company employees are using Twitter. Pharmaguy is looking at pharma employees who have personal Twitter accounts, how they use these accounts, who follows them and whom they follow, and how influential they are. This article is an introduction to the first round of members of this group.

Has It Been Found? What Does It Reveal About Pfizer's Social Media Implementation Plan?. Ray Kerins (@raykerins), Vice President of Worldwide Communications at Pfizer, talks about Pfizer's 'groundbreaking internal Social Media Playbook' but won't show it to us. What can be in the playbook? How many people does Pfizer dedicate to social media? This article discusses those questions and offers a peek into a playbook contender.

A summary of the highly anticipated 2011 results of Kantar Health's annual Stakeholder Effectiveness survey, which revealed that over two-thirds of respondents from leading companies in the pharmaceutical sector think that customer retention is a key performance measure.

The authors of a physician survey published in the November 8, 2010, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine conclude 'given that 83.8% of physicians have PIRs, it is clear that industry still has substantial financial links with the nation's physicians. These findings support the ongoing need for a national system of disclosure of PIRs [Physician-Drug Industry Relationships].' Such a system is part of the Physician Sunshine Law, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2012 with public disclosure of payments scheduled to begin September, 2013.

A conversation with Elizabeth A. Cermak, EVP, and Chief Commercial Officerat Pozen, Raj Amin, CEO and Co-Founder of HealthiNation, and Bonin Bough, Senior Global Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, about the who, what, why behind the Pozen Digital Advisory Board, an esteemed group of digital thought-leaders both in and outside of healthcare.

Peter Pitts, author of DrugWonks Blog, has put together 11