“Safe” Social Media for Pharma Marketers Alliance Health’s Safe Social APIClick Here for Additional Resources
A conversation with Dan Hickey, SVP of Products at Alliance Health (see Bio), about Alliance Health’s Safe Social API, which enables marketing partners in the pharmaceutical industry to build interactive pages within the company’s network of condition-specific social health networks.
Aired LIVE on:
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
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BackgroundAlliance Health Networks, the leading social platform serving healthcare consumers and marketers, recently launched its Safe Social API, enabling marketing partners in the pharmaceutical industry to quickly and seamlessly build interactive pages within the company’s network of condition-specific social health networks.
The Safe Social API is part of Alliance Health’s newly released Software Development Kit (SDK), which enables health brands to independently embed applications and build customized tools and messaging campaigns on the company’s proprietary Connect platform. Alliance Health owns and operates more than 50 condition-specific social networks, which offer consumers the ability to connect with other patients, as well as to products and services addressing chronic and complex conditions.
Until now Alliance Health’s Safe Social API has been used exclusively by the company’s own developers to create and deploy campaigns for its marketing partners in the health care industry. With the release of the SDK, those same clients and their agencies of record now have programmatic access to Alliance Health’s platform.
“This is a game-changer for us,” said Shwen Gwee, Vice President of Digital Health at Edelman, whose clients include several of the top ten pharmaceutical companies. “The Safe Social API provides us with more creative and flexible options, as well as the ability to optimize ongoing campaigns to drive better user experiences, all the while ensuring strict adherence to regulatory guidelines through control over content and design on the platform.”
The API streamlines the lengthy and exacting legal review process pharmaceutical companies must undertake each time one of its brands launch a direct-to-consumer marketing campaign. Companies or their agencies can use the API to deploy, refine and scale their online campaigns as their needs evolve.
“We listened to our clients and now we’re thrilled to provide them with the ability to quickly and easily build safe social experiences across our social network,” said Dan Hickey, senior vice president of products at Alliance Health Networks. “By opening up our platform we’ve enabled leading health brands to leverage and customize all of our social features to power their campaigns and streamline the internal legal review process.”
Questions/Topics Discussed- What are the major impediments AHN sees to getting pharma more fully integrated into patient communities?
- What was the impetus for developing the API?
- How does the API enable safe engagement with patients in a social context?
- To what extent – or in what ways – do patients on sites like Diabetic Connect want to engage with pharma?
- With pharma now using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube to engage consumers, what is the added value of participation in patient communities?
- Do you see value in dedicated mobile sites and/or native apps for pharma? For consumers?
Guest Bio
As Senior Vice President of Product, Dan Hickey is responsible for leading the Company’s product strategy and development.
Prior to Alliance Health, Mr. Hickey was Senior Vice President at Meredith Corporation where he spearheaded the growth and development of the Meredith Women’s Network, including sites such Better Homes and Gardens, Parents.com, Mixingbowl.com, and Recipe.com. Over his ten-year career at Meredith, the Women’s Network grew from 5 million to 40 million users. Mr. Hickey has earned industry recognition for innovation and product excellence, including being named “Social Media Superstar” by MIN and has spoken at conferences worldwide. Prior to Meredith, Mr. Hickey was director of product at AOL, and previous to that was director of electronic products at the National Gardening Association where he founded one of the largest gardening web sites.
He is a graduate of Albion College, Michigan and has completed advanced media coursework in Health and Medicine at Boston University.
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