Earlier today, MTV announced that they will ‘reward’ people for having STD check-ups if they show they have done so on Foursquare. For those that hate jargon, this basically means that if you are signed up to the social network Foursquare, which tells other Foursquare users where you are through the GPS location of your smartphone, MTV will see that you have physically entered an STD clinic and congratulate you for doing so. The reward is a Foursquare badge, which is basically the digital equivalent of saying “I woz ‘ere”. The badge shows other users where you have been, and a desirable way to show you’re an active member of the community. While other brands besides MTV have been rewarding Foursquare users, this is the first highly promoted use of the social network for healthcare that we’re aware of. There are surely therefore other applications of the network worth giving some more thought in terms of healthcare…
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Posts Tagged ‘pharma online’
MTV reward you for STD check-ups shown on Foursquare
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010How Twitter ‘fast follow’ can keep you updated at a conference
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010While this is not necessarily an amazing new development, the new ‘fast follow’ on Twitter does have some very practical, simple and crucially easy uses – one of which is particularly relevant for healthcare communications. At big conferences or events, following the official conference Twitter feed (such as @ASCO) will keep you up to date on what is being presented as it happens and what the most promoted sessions are by the organiser. There might also be particular feeds from specific pharma companies presenting new study data that you’d want to keep an eye on. But what if you don’t have a reliable internet connection all the time? Or if you are pretty unfamiliar with Twitter and don’t have an account yourself? ‘Fast follow’ offers a solution …
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How effective are Flash games at educating patients?
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010A new Flash game called ‘Privates’, made by Channel 4, has launched in the UK. Players control a squad of condom-hatted soldiers who run around the pubic region shooting sexually transmitted diseases with anti-viral bazookas (yes, really – watch the ‘Privates’ trailer if you want to see for yourself). So is this dumbing down to an absurd level, or does this kind of thing actually work?
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What can healthcare social media learn from the coolest brands on Facebook?
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010Recent blog posts over at Ignite Social Media show some great insights into what’s big on Facebook right now. For pharma and healthcare social media, Facebook offers quite a lot of opportunity, not least because of how easy it is to moderate comments and how ‘low-risk’ this is when compared to something like Twitter. While the only health ‘brand’ in Ignite’s top 50 is Breast Cancer Awareness (US), there is still much to be learned from non-health campaigns. So what are the brands with thousands of followers, who post hundreds of pro-brand comments on these pages, doing right?
What is the real future for newspapers?
Thursday, July 8th, 2010Rupert Murdoch has just launched The Times paywall. Arch rival BBC Online is soon to launch its redesigned site. And a ‘Save the Daily Mirror’ Facebook page has launched as even more staff are cut. Last year most commentators predicted a slow death for newspapers. Indeed, 166 newspapers in the US ceased printing from 2008-9, and hundreds of UK journalists lost their jobs as their papers got shockingly thinner. So are newspapers really going the way of the telegram?
Google’s search for Parkinson’s cure: A role-model for pharma
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010Wealth can’t buy health, but can technology? Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, thinks it can and is using the search engine to try to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease, which his genes say he has an 80% chance of getting. Online clinical trial recruitment and health research is already progressing at an impressive rate, but this is different, and could end up being an important model for pharma and healthcare industry.
We’re becoming an ‘appy nation
Thursday, July 1st, 2010It seems that no business is truly innovative unless they have a novel way of reaching out to their customers. Recently, Apple’s iPhone applications have opened up a new world of reference tools, games and ways to interact with each other. However, apps in the health space are a more exciting and potentially life saving prospect with medical reference guides, diagnosis tools and live GP consultations (coming to an iPhone near you soon).
3D technology: Nostalgic fad or innovative tool for healthcare communications?
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010On Saturday the Sun newspaper was printed in 3D, with free glasses. Last year Channel 4 had 3D week. And now World Cup matches will be showed in 3D in your local boozer. The trend is obviously pretty big, although it’s been around before (remember the eighties?) so is likely to dip in a year or two, if not sooner. However, that is not to say the technology isn’t effective if applied well. So here are a few ideas about how to utilise 3D technology in healthcare communications…
Web applications for internal pharma comms
Friday, May 21st, 2010The latest pharmaphorum blog post discusses how operating in silos can restrict great ideas from coming to fruition in pharma. Mike Rea writes that “solo within a silo, unable to see what everyone else is doing, you are forced to guess (or presume) what the other silos need of you, or to guess what it is that they know that you need to know. And, if you knew it all already, or were capable of going it alone, those other silos wouldn’t really be needed…” Internal communications is where this lives or dies, and while the big debate when it comes to social media and pharma rests in how pharma can engage external audiences, innovation comes from within. So how can pharma use web applications to improve internal comms?
