Social Media Trends, Regs, and Apps
By Robin Robinson
Apps, Games, and Support Sites Added Value for Healthcare Consumers
Trend: Pharma and payers create digital tools to serve patients and physicians
Lilly’s Mobile App Provides Oncology Trial Data Directly to Physicians
Lilly’s Oncology Clinical Trial Resource mobile app offers cancer care professionals a way to search for and identify details about all global oncology clinical trials — not just those sponsored by Lilly. The app lets healthcare professionals search oncology trials that are enrolling new patients by disease state, molecule being studied, study phase, country, state, and keyword. The app’s functionality provides a mechanism for the healthcare professional to contact Lilly Oncology for additional trial details, as well as a third-party contact for non-Lilly clinical trials. Lilly also launched a new website, lillyoncologypipeline.com, that contains information on its pipeline of potential cancer and supportive care molecules. Healthcare professionals can search for information about Lilly Oncology’s pipeline by drug discovery platform, cancer type, clinical trial phase, and molecular target on the website. Specific information about each medicine includes illustrations of the target pathway and, when available, a video of the pipeline compound’s method of action. { To download, visit itunes.apple.com/us/app/lilly-oncology-clinical-trials/id511928123?mt=8 Boehringer Ingelheim and CancerCare Create Community Support Tool Boehringer Ingelheim and CancerCare recently created My Cancer Circle, a free and private support community for caregivers of people facing cancer. The online tool can help organize a community of people who want to help a family affected by cancer by coordinating volunteer activities, including meals, transportation to medical appointments, and other tasks, as well as provide a private space where community members can offer words of support and encouragement and caregivers can post updates and information. Community site service Lotsa Helping Hands provides the infrastructure for the planning with its public or private networks. { For more information, visit mycancercircle.lotsahelpinghands.com. Aetna and Mindbloom Offer Free Social Health Game to Aetna Members Aetna and Mindbloom will offer Aetna members an enhanced version of Mindbloom’s Life Game, an online social game for personal wellness. Members have access to a new engagement model that uses the science behind social gaming — a unique blend of technology, art, and behavioral psychology — to engage people in achieving personal health and wellness goals. Mindbloom is a Seattle-based social media company and the creator of the online Life Game, a personalized wellness application that inspires and helps people to live healthier, more balanced lives. The Life Game helps people focus on many areas of life including: health, spirituality, relationships, leisure, lifestyle, finances, creativity, and career. The Aetna collaboration involves a significant enhancement to the Life Game as well as new mobile features. For an overview of the Life Game, visit mindbloom.com/aetna. { For more information, visit aetna.com or aetnatools.com. TECH CHECK Apps, Tweets, and Videos Apps… Mapping illness app upgrades sick features Sickweather, an online social network that maps and forecasts illness, updated its nearly one-year-old beta phase app with new features. The latest beta release, nicknamed Nightingale in honor of Florence Nightingale and nurses, eliminates the need to be a member in order to search the map and forecast, adds a Recommend a Remedy function in the news feed, adds a tracking feature that shows the directional movement and emergence of any illness, and a new expanding map function, plus illness glossary definitions. Earlier this year, the app was named to Entrepreneur magazine’s 100 Brilliant Companies of 2012 list. The first real-time sickness forecasting and mapping service provides users with streamlined access to the health of their online social circles. Sickweather mines social networking sites for key words in status updates that indicate the presence of illness by location. { For more information, visit sickweather.com, facebook.com/sickweather, or @sickweather. Migraine app offers interactive journal for better physician communication Health Union has launched a free Migraine Meter mobile app to help patients manage and monitor their migraines. The app features the latest migraine news, patient tips, and expert opinions from Migraine.com and an interactive journal with limitless data storage. The interactive migraine journal allows patients to track their migraine history for review by their physician. Migraine sufferers can record the time, date, severity, impact to their daily life, treatments, triggers, and more. Prior entries can be edited at any time. The Migraine Meter data are stored securely and can also be accessed via the website migraine.com. Data entered on the app are instantaneously visible on the site, and easy-to-read summary reports can be generated from either the website or the app. The website was launched in 2010 and reaches thousands of migraine patients each month, and claims to be the largest and fastest growing online community dedicated solely to migraine sufferers. The app is available for download on iPhone and Android formats. { To download,visit: migraine.com/iphone-app/ or migraine.com/android-app/ Medical adherence service adds app to solutions HealthPrize Technologies, an innovative medication adherence solutions company, added a mobile app for iPhone and Android to its HealthPrize desktop services, making it the first of its kind to provide an integrated platform of creative rewards, games, education, and competitions designed to improve medication adherence, both online and through mobile. The HealthPrize app is available for use by registered HealthPrize participants and was used by participants in an asthma and COPD pilot study in collaboration with RealAge, a leading online wellness company. Preliminary findings at the four-month mark of the pilot demonstrated high engagement rates, which are expected to rise with adoption of the mobile app. { For more information about HealthPrize, visit Healthprize.com. { To download, visit itunes.apple.com/us/app/healthprize/id468616975?mt=8 Tweets … Twitter feed list Tracks Growing Pharma Use Mark Senak, author of Eye on FDA blog, has created a Twitter list feed that collects all the tweets from pharma companies. The number of companies using Twitter continues to grow and the total at this printing is 44 pharma/medical product users, an increase of nine from 35 in February 2011. Of those, 21 companies have single feeds, 23 have more than one, and Roche, with the most different feeds, has 28. According to Mr. Senak, who sheds more light on these breakdowns and his thoughts on the motivations behind the efforts in his blog, the company with the most tweets on a single feed was Accesspharma with 12,432 tweets. The pharma Twitter feed with the most followers is Pfizer_News with 27,750, and the company with the highest Klout score is Novartis with a score of 56. { For more information, visit eyeonfda.com or twitter.com/#!/eyeonfda/pharma-companies Videos… Ethics driven pharma story emerges in Carnegie Council Youtube video While browsing YouTube channels for interesting industry examples, I discovered this video of a Carnegie Council workshop regarding business ethics in the financial sector. A participant of the workshop, Carol Perlman, partner at Continuum Solutions, has worked within the pharma industry for 30 years, and describes an experience she had when an unnamed pharma company went through a transformation to become totally ethics-driven. She describes it like this: “Our path [at the pharma company had been that] we forgot who the patient was and we went right for the sales. [But then] we got a new CEO who was totally ethics-driven [and] he turned the company on its ear. I thank every day that I had the experience of seeing how to do it wrong and how to absolutely do it right." After the shift to an ethics-driven environment, Ms. Perlman says decisions about continuing drug development were made in the best interest of the patient, and drug discovery was abandoned if there was any question of patient safety. { To upload video, visit: youtube.com/watch?v=W3OJf8hcqcY or carnegiecouncil.org/resources/multimedia/20120327/index.html J&J Health channel features mom in Lupus video Christine Miserandino is a 34-year-old mother who was chosen to be featured in Johnson & Johnson’s first YouTube video about lupus. Several years ago she started a blog called butyoudon’tlooksick about her almost 20-year experience with the disease. The blog, along with her Facebook page, have become resources for patients with lupus and with other chronic conditions. On the J&J video, she says, “I found that a great way to deal with my illness was to help others have an easier time with theirs." Ms. Miserandino is hoping that the video will help increase awareness and understanding of lupus. { To upload video, visit youtube.com/watch?v=t2Y-vTHWAdo&feature=plcp
