Sorting Through Social Media

As I finish up this long weekend of holiday on-call during this Independence Day weekend, I've decided that I'm going to try to get back to writing and finding my blogging voice again. Can you believe that it was four years ago when I started this blog? And, I used to write every day? Sometimes, I would write more than one post a day.

Must, like most things, when the excitement faded, my eagerness to write also faded. Plus, I started a live internet show (ie - live podcast), and that took a lot of time to put together. Regardless, I'm going to try to get back to writing again. I know by watching my number of visits to the blog - that most people have stopped reading. So, this will be fun to try to get back to try to write interesting stuff again.

I was in San Francisco last week at a conference. And, one of the questions that I had for the hard core users of Social Media was this - How do you sort through the information overload that we call Social Media? And, I got some great practical advice from people who do this every day. For example, what does your desktop look like when you're catching up on Social Media?

If you saw my previous post, I'm trying to clean up and change the look of the blog a little bit. I'm trying out the templates that are over here on blogger. In addition, I've been reorganizing my google reader a little bit as well. I'm going to try this out in trying to sort through reading blog posts and reading tweets. Yes, I'm going to try to get back and reading/commenting on blogs again. I really feel bad about being absent from the comment areas of my fave blogs.

So, since I'm taking a little break from the show, I'm going to try to re-explore some of the other areas of social media which I have been neglecting. But, an interesting question that I have for anyone who reads this is this question - What do you use to sort through social media? Do you use an RSS feed reader? Do you now get most of your info through twitter and a twitter reader like tweetdeck? I'm trying to find an efficient way to sort through all of this stuff....

Happy July 4th!

Just wanted to wish everyone (especially in the United States) - a happy Independence Day! How am I celebrating? Well, I'm on call for this long three day weekend. Yeesh. Been browsing around the web today, when I can get a little break, and I see people like my good friend Dr. Wes post pics from the local 4th of July parade. (If you're feeling really nostalgic, then you can check out my first, really lame, July 4th posting. Ugh)

What kind of pic do I have today? Well, it's me. I know, how boring is that. But, I thought I would take today and try to gain my independence from my blog template. Yup, I've officially ran out of material to write about. Anyway, I'm going to be trying out some of the new templates over here on blogger to see if I like them. Let me know what you think. And, have a great Independence day everybody!

Digital Pharma West 2010: Wrap-up

As I'm writing this, it is about an hour before my flight home. The final day of Digital Pharma West 2010 was highlighted (in my opinion), with the panel that included myself and @Doctor_V. This was a great discussion about social media, physicians, and pharma. I'll probably have more to reflect on this discussion as I have more time to reflect on it.

With respect to physicians adoption (or non-adoption) of social media platforms, topics that were talked about include questions like this: How can social media fit into the physician workflow? Everyone knows that time is probably the most prized commodity of the physician's day. And, if any tool (social media or otherwise) cannot effectively and efficiently integrate into the physician daily workflow, then it will not be adopted or implemented.

Other physician barriers to social media, in my opinion, include concerns over privacy (personal physician privacy as well as patient privacy), security of the information, and, of course, liability issues. From the pharma standpoint, it was very interesting hearing how departments like "legal" in their companies can get in the way of innovation and "taking a risk on social media."

I very much appreciated the questions that were asked by the attendees. (You can get a flavor of the discussion by checking out the twitter stream from day 3 - via Phil Baumann)

The final session of the day was called the "Unconference" in which there were about 20 people left. This was kind of a "town hall" type of format in which there was a free flowing discussion wrapping up the meeting. I very much appreciated the discussion here. The pharma people who were left were asking very pointed questions. I really hope this discussion continues.

Finally, I'm thinking about having a live podcast at some point to continue the discussion of how physicians, pharma, and social media would intersect. I wonder if there would be an interest in this - other than my personal interest in this. Leave comments below with feedback. Thanks again to the organizers of Digital Pharma West 2010 for the opportunity to be a part of the meeting!

Digital Pharma West 2010: Day 2

There has been a lot of talk about transparency in the past couple of days. The observations made in this post may test the comfort level of some when it comes to being transparent… Day 2 of Digital Pharma West 2010 was actually day one since technically the first day was some pre-conference sessions. But regardless, the topics and discussion for the Tuesday sessions were also very interesting and pretty good. The morning sessions, in my opinion, had to do a lot with sales. But, what do you expect from a marketing conference?

I talked about this in a previous post, but I just find it interesting that success stories in this industry are ones which are of orphan disease conditions (in other words, important but less common disease conditions) in which there is only one medication to choose from for that condition. In other words, it is a success because there is a monopoly in that area.

This is so interesting to me. It’s kind of like the cable television model of comcast and time warner. Of course this model is going to be a success – there is no other competition. Also something interesting was the continued use of phrases like “Disease State Marketing.” I don’t know about you, but that kind of sends chills up my spine. But, what do I know, I’m just a physician…

One of the last sessions of the afternoon talked about physician behavior while online. By the title, this was very intriguing to me. (BTW, I’m not going to mention the presenter or the company by name here. But, this will be an interesting test of their social media presence, since I anticipate to be corrected on any inaccuracies in the following…)

Anyway, from how I understood the presentation, they tracked where physicians went on the internet while at home (using proprietary technology, of course, placed on their home computer). From this, they accumulated data and are extrapolating – that THIS is how physicians behave overall while online. When they tried to get access to physician’s office computers to do the same thing, the company was shown a big “HIPPA” sign and that stopped any tracking at the office. Understandable.

As the graphs and the data were being shown to the audience, the entire crowd seemed very interested – that is, except two physicians in the audience – me and @Doctor_V. Check out the tweets that occurred during the presentation by clicking here.

Now, even though I’m pretty down on the presentation, I do give credit to this company for at least attempting to get this data. And, to their defense, they stated that they just started accumulating data in the past year. So, definitely this is a continuing work in progress. Plus, the feedback following the presentation was not all positive, and the company stated that they can further granulate the data to answer more specific questions that the audience had.

For example, one of the pieces of data that were shown was the low tendency of physicians to use “Social Media.” The audience brought out in the Q&A that there are social media pieces within some sites – like medscape. How can this data be captured?

However, an underlying premise of this study is physician behavior online at home trends toward overall physician behavior – meaning that the websites that they go to at home are presumably the same ones that they go to overall. I don’t think that this can be very accurate. Another piece missing is physician internet use while on a mobile device, like a smartphone. I think this data is needed, but how to capture that is difficult (I understand that).

What’s a conference without controversy, right? The dialogue here has been excellent. Like I said previously, I’m learning lots about an industry that I know little about. This knowledge gives me perspective in how things work from their end. The final day of Digital Pharma West is highlighted by a panel discussion which includes me and @Doctor_V. Should be a good time!

Dr. A Show 172 Wrap-Up: Bryan Vartabedian

Thanks so much to Dr. Bryan Vartabedian for being on Doctor Anonymous Show 172. He is founder of the website 33Charts.com in which he does commentary on medicine and social media issues.



He is known on twitter as @Doctor_V and we are going to be presenting at the Digital Pharma West conference in San Francisco on June 30, 2010. In the video above, we discuss some possible reasons why physicians have been slow to adapt to social media platforms. I hope to post other brief video segments when I get a chance to edit them.



You can listen to the entire audio podcast in the player below. You can also download the entire audio podcast and listen anytime by clicking here. If you enjoy the show, check out the Facebook page for the show and you can even download other shows over at the iTunes page. Check out other of my videos on my YouTube page.

Digital Pharma West 2010

I've never been to this conference before, so I really didn't have any expectations coming in here. The only thing I knew that the target audience for this meeting are those in the pharma industry. If you didn't already know, I was asked to be on a panel discussion later this week. But, I wanted to check out the other parts of this conference to see what it was all about.

Even though this was only day one, I have definitely learned a lot. The morning session did reveal some interesting stats which I didn't know about before:
*Almost 75% of physicians own a smart phone
*84% of health care professionals access their smartphones in between pt consultations
*By 2013, mobile internet users will exceed desktop internet users
*1 in 3000 commercial messages, including detailing, results in a change in behavior
*1 in 3 interactions with a respected colleauges results in a change in behavior

Of course, what really interested me was the discussions that took place in regards to social media and pharma. What I'm learning is that like other industries, for those at the highest executive levels, social media is still a mystery. For example, there was along discussion on the question, "Is there ROI (return on investment) in Social Media?" (You can get a flavor of the tweets that were made from this twazzup link via Phil Baumann. Follow the tweets with the hashtag #digpharm)

One segment of the discussion which interested me was reviewing pharma websites which the audience felt were social media successes. The discussion was how these sites "created" patient communities. I disagree with this evaluation. I could be wrong, but I think these sites tapped into an already established disease specific patient communities. The question for industry is after getting these people signed up for their site, what is the next step? The discussion continues...

Obsessed

After getting back from dinner tonight, I was just channel surfing and found the a show on A&E television called "Obsessed" - whose 2nd season started tonight. The show shares stories from people who have mental health issues like obsessive/compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and other anxiety-type disorders.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch the show from the start of the episode. But, what I saw was definitely powerful and gripping television. You hear from the patient, their families, along with the professional whom they are working. I thought that the stories were packaged well and in a fair light. I'll be curious to see more of this show.

During the course of watching this show tonight, there are a couple of thoughts that I had. First, I was thinking that even back in college, there was a very negative stigma toward people with mental health issues - both in real life, along with in the media like on television or in movies. But, in the past few years, I believe that the stigma has been changing has the public has learned not only about the diagnoses, but also the stories behind the diagnoses.

The second thought that I had was about the people who are profiled in these stories. I ask myself what would motivate people to be on a show like this - especially this one. I mean, the people with these diagnoses have anxiety. Yet, they agree to be on national television which in some people, would cause even more anxiety. It's just interesting to me. What do you think about these last two thoughts?

Headache Awareness

June 6-12, 2010 was National Headache Awareness Week. If you would like more information, definitely check out the website for the National Headache Foundation. Above are two TV interviews that took place this week on local morning TV news talking about headaches. Check out Headache video 1 and Headache video 2 above. If you find these helpful, I encourage you to check out my other TV interviews at MikeSevilla.TV.

Dr. A Show 172: Bryan Vartabedian

Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 9pm ET

I invite you to join me this week for Doctor Anonymous Show 172 with guest Dr. Bryan Vartabedian who is a pediatric gastroenterologist at Texas Children's Hospital and the Baylor College of Medicine. He is known on twitter as @Doctor_V and is author of the blog 33Charts.com where he discusses medicine and social media topics. (also check out his interview above at this year's SXSH2010 and my video promo below)

Next week in San Francisco, the Digital Pharma West conference will take place at the Parc 55 Wyndham hotel. Bryan and I will be on a panel there, talking about physicians, social media, and marketing. The panel includes Jason Appel, Scott Ellis, and Dean Sawyer. Here are some of the questions (according to the copy of the pamphlet I have):

*Why are there so few physicians in the social space?
*Communicating directly with docs online: What is working and what isn't?
*How to walk the delicate line between providing physicians with educational information versus marketing messages
*How emerging technology is intergrated into the physician workflow and how can pharmaceutical marketers best participate

If you are new to the show, I encourage you to catch us live. There is a great chat room that also goes on. You can even see my shining face on the webcam. In addition, you can call into the show to say hello. Can't catch us live? That's ok. You can listen anytime after the show as it is saved as a podcast so you can listen anytime!

For first time Blog Talk Radio listeners:
*Although it is not required to listen to the show, I encourage you to register on the BlogTalkRadio site prior to the show. I think it will make the process easier.

*To get to my show site, click here. As show time gets closer, keep hitting "refresh" on your browser until you see the "Play/Chat" button. Then, of course, press the "Play/Chat" button.

Dr. A Show 171 Wrap-up: Dr. Kim Yu

Thanks to Dr. Kim Yu for being my guest for Doctor Anonymous Show 171. She is a Family Physician in solo private practice in the Metro Detroit area. The first part of the interview talks about how she came to find Family Medicine as a specialty. We then talked about her life as a solo physician and her interest in areas like minority medicine topics. We concluded the interview with talking about social media topics.
I also encourage you to check out the video segments in this post including the opening moments to the show, Dr. Yu's comments about being a solo physician, and our discussion about medicine and social media.

You can listen to the entire audio podcast in the player below. You can also download the entire audio podcast and listen anytime by clicking here. If you enjoy the show, check out the Facebook page for the show and you can even download other shows over at the iTunes page. Check out other of my videos on my YouTube page.