Health care coverage was expanded automatically to 32 million Americans in March 2010 when President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Portability and Affordable Care Act (ACA). President Obama stated, “My job is to set forward a vision – point people in the right direction.” Since the ACA eliminated pre-existing conditions, developmentally, intellectually and […]
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Meaningful Use as Digital Health Incubator
We’ve all heard about “Meaningful Use,” but where did it come from, what does it mean, and how might healthcare consumers ultimately benefit? Let’s find out! Back in 2008 the National Quality Forum (NQF) issued a report identifying opportunities for improving public health, efficiency, safety, privacy, and patient engagement, among other areas. The recommendations became […]
Why the Healthcare Ecosystem Matters
Value-based reimbursement models have emerged to encourage new efficiencies aimed at improving population health and lowering the cost of care. With the realignment of incentives, the companies and organizations that comprise the healthcare ecosystem: primarily hospitals, medical groups and payers with connections to medical device, pharma, mHealth and others, have been working more closely than […]
Reaching the BFFs of Healthcare Social Media
Now that the majority of brands have established a social media presence, they’ve shifted from developing social media strategies to asking how they can use them to maximize patient engagement. But in order to identify the value of their efforts, marketers must gain an understanding of who they’re reaching, the social channels consumers prefer and […]
mHealth and Telemedicine: A Matter of Right and Not a Privilege
Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s landmark speech at the 1978 Democratic National Convention in Memphis, Tennessee emphatically brought attention to our nation’s health care dilemma, establishing his stance on health care as a matter of right and not of privilege. The human right to health care means that “services must be accessible, available, acceptable, and of […]
Five Things Pharma Can Learn From CPGs
Pharma insiders sometimes dismiss the marketing campaigns of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) as being too far removed from our work to be relevant. “They have such big budgets! They don’t have our restrictions! What can we learn from them?” A lot, we think. Group Account Director David Barwig, who is new to Intouch Solutions’ New York […]
Digital Musings for Pharma: Rethinking Social Media Engagement
Since 2009, the nascent medium called social media has blossomed into something that is now entwined into the very fabric of our personal lives. Billions of people flock to Facebook daily. Some 90% of journalists now get their news and news ideas from Twitter. LinkedIn has dramatically altered how we find and recruit talent, and […]
DTC in Perspective: FDA Doing Study About Risk Communication
FDA is proposing a study which I call “less is more.” The study is long overdue. They are concerned that too many risks are being presented in television ads and perhaps this confuses consumers. The basic lesson of advertising is to focus on the main point or compelling benefit if you want people to remember […]
Prescribing Programmatic Buying for DTC Media Plans
Programmatic advertising, the automation of media buying and selling using technology and data for hyper-targeting, is one of the ad worlds’ hottest trends. Research firm eMarketer recently estimated that digital display ads bought programmatically in the US grew 137% to more than $10 billion in 2014, and now account for 45% of all display ad […]
The Pharma Marketers’ Innovator’s Dilemma
Why innovate? It’s a question frequently asked by many pharmaceutical marketers. From a campaign development perspective, innovation is seen as a way to break through the clutter in order to set new benchmarks for success. Unfortunately, in the process, it’s easy to just innovate for innovation sake, and implement the latest thing without regard to […]
