Last night at 3TVancouver David Jones hinted at a social media site from the pharma industry would launch today. I poked him this morning for the link and he sent out the link to this—Bayer Xarelto: Online Media Centre.
Before social media purists start going bonkers about any lack of features, remember the pharma industry in the US and Canada (world-wide actually) is so heavily regulated and restricted that doing much more that this is extremely risky.
How risky? In Canada a violation of the drug marketing rules is a criminal offence, yes like behind bars and orange jumpsuit.
What Bayer has done is right on the money. Well for pharma. David and H&K guided them to make the resources that typically were obtuse to say the least available, searchable, and shareable.
Huh? Why would I want to share info on venous blood clots?
Well I don’t. However health bloggers would. Journalists would. Web-savvy doctors would.
It’s a small step, but having tried to push the envelope (and, ahem, did to the edges of legality and a wee beyond) when I was in pharma, this is a good thing.
Tris Hussey is a writer, teacher, blogger, and speaker on all facets of Internet life, WordPress, and social media. He is the author of Create Your Own Blog: 6 Easy Blogging Projects to Start Blogging Like a Pro and Using WordPress.
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I really appreciate your perspective on this. We’ve got the ability to turn features on as we move forward, but this is a very ginger first step into taking existing PR information and making it work a little harder on the web.
It’s an experiment that I hope leads to some further activity in the pharma industry. In the U.S., there have been quite a few firms i.e. J&J and Abbott that have launched YouTube Channels with their Video News Releases all over them. It’s an interesting time to be involved in the pharma communications business to say the least.
David Joness last blog post..Social Media and the Canadian elections
Exactly. I fought lots of battles just to get a logo on an asthma brochure. Let’s not even get into the patient info sites. I’m hoping we see this done company-wide and not just per brand.