Welcome to the digital marketing roundup, which this week features Pfizer’s Dupuytren’s disease campaign, a Facebook app from ViroPharma, new pharma digital marketing spend analysis and eHealth.
There’s also a link below to the first in our new Tip Of The Week series, which is produced in association with CDM and can be found in the Digital Handbook.
Tip of the week: parallax scrolling
Pfizer UK has launched a new campaign to raise awareness of Dupuytren’s disease and is using a series of videos (still from one pictured above) to show the personal impact of the debilitating hand condition. It can advance into Dupuytren’s contracture, where the affected finger or fingers permanently bend inwards into the palm of the hand. In addition to the videos, hosted on its YouTube channel, Pfizer has created a new European website to provide further information about the condition and useful tools such as a Dupuytren’s disease symptoms checker.
US-based biopharma company ViroPharma has launched a Facebook app to encourage the testing and diagnosis of hereditary angioedema (HAE). The Family Tree Facebook Application enables people with HAE to share educational resources with family members so they can better understand how the disease may affect their family. ViroPharma, which markets HAE drug Cinryze, has also set up a HAE Family Tree Facebook page, which allows visitors to start building their personal family tree. (Read more on The Directory.)
Pharma’s digital marketing spending, which has tended to languish far behind investments in more traditional activities, is set for a major rise, according to a new report. Cutting Edge Information found that not only is pharma’s digital marketing spend on the rise, but for a typical pharmaceutical brand, digital investments are actually set to surpass budgets for traditional media. Examining 15 brands the US consultants found that on average $150,000 per molecule was spent on digital marketing during phase IIIA development. This figure then tripled between regulatory approval and immediately after the launch. (Read more on Communique.)
Mobile phone companies, already involved in providing mHealth services, are also eyeing the burgeoning eHealth market by developing new ICT capabilities in areas such as cloud-based medical records and the provision of health information exchanges. “Today operators have evolved and are best placed to deliver the solutions addressing the issues that the global healthcare industry faces, by lowering costs and making healthcare more accessible,” said Chris Locke, from mobile industry association GSMA. The association has just released a new report, Integrating Healthcare: The Role and Value of Mobile Operators in eHealth, examining the wider healthcare ecosystem. The eHealth market is estimated to be worth up to $160bn in 2015, eclipsing the mHealth, or mobile health, market, which is tipped to reach $23bn by 2017.
• This week the Digital Intelligence blog also covered a trial that suggested text messaging can increase medication adherence and a study that highlighted the need for healthcare data ‘trade rules’ if governments, organisations and individuals are to benefit from the huge amounts of personal data now available.
