Category Archives: Social Media
Well hello #Instagram!
I have been working and mentoring in social media for many, many years now and as part of that have been a very active user … of some platforms. I was a huge Facebook and Twitter fan, followed closely by Pinterest. Linkedin is Linkedin … great, functional but not really “fun”. Then there was Instagram.
Many of my friends are huge Instagram fans but I just never really got it. Instagram was just so all about “me, me, me” and selfies. You couldn’t collect and share images in the same way you can on Pinterest, so what was the point other than to blow one’s own trumpet? Now I did have an account, after all I work in social media, but just like my Snapchat account, I never used it.
Until recently. I casually started browsing Instagram and playing with the app and started coming across travel images. At the same time I also started posting more to Instagram. And so the addiction began!
Actually what I discovered was a magical world of beautiful and breathtaking images from around the world. As I sat in Zurich still nursing a broken heart I longed to get away and travel and Instagram acted as a balm for my soul as well as inspiration and hope for the future. I too would travel and see some of these places.
At the same time I also discovered the draw of checking to see if people had liked my images. The draw of likes to my Facebook posts left me long ago … but here it was again on a different platform! This does of course however support my theory of Instagram being very self-centred – here I was being all about me!
But Instagram is more than that I now see. In fact I am now also looking at it with new eyes as I wonder if I should look to move some of my charity work for Hope for Romanian Strays here. I am also providing a friend who’s just launched a new business with advice on how to grow their Instagram account, which is a learning experience in itself. Each day I discover new things and each day I learn more.
And there we have it … I have become an Instagramer and love it! Instagram provides a window to our beautiful world and turns out to be a marvelous place to roam. If you are on Instagram please pop over and follow me.
The value of respecting your customers
The news is currently awash with a spectacular example of a company failing to have any respect for its customers. When #United decided to have a paying passenger dragged off one its planes to accommodate employees, whom the airline felt had more right to be at work the next day than said customer, they showed a total disrespect for their customers. The incident, and the initial response of the CEO, also showed a total lack of respect, and understanding, for the power of the citizen journalist and social media.
The fact that other customers filmed the shocking incident and shared it online really should not have come as a surprise, nor should the fact that it got picked up by the media and went viral. The days of being able to just bury incidents under the carpet are gone. Whilst not all examples of bad customer service go viral it is now a real danger for any company, and as such all companies need to start being much more vigilant to customer complaints, especially when these are posted to a social media network.
The other factor here is also basic marketing. When I did my Masters in marketing one of the things we learnt was people talk more about a negative experience than a bad one. It is also accepted business wisdom that happy customers are more profitable for companies – they spend more and it is cheaper to retain them than it is to gain new customers. The other thing we learnt was that a company can turn a customer with a negative experience into a loyal customer by the way they handle a complaint. It is all about making the customer feel valued.
I have numerous personal examples that support these facts. In fact my motivation for this blog post is not the United incident but my current debacle with Turkish Airlines. Right now I am an extremely unhappy customer and have been appalled at their dreadful customer service. As a frequent flyer with airlines like British Airways I have come to expect a certain degree of customer service from reputable airlines and I had been under the impression that Turkish Airlines also fell into that category but clearly not.
The issue in question was entirely my own fault but highlights the difference between an airline like British Airways and Turkish Airlines. I recently booked my holiday to the Philippines but to my horror a couple of hours after paying for the flight I realised that I had booked the wrong dates (due to still being under the weather with my Hashimoto’s btw). I called Turkish Airlines up immediately to try to find a solution to this. I was greeted with an unfriendly and unhelpful rep who refused to help in anyway. This is entirely at the discretion of the airline as I know that British Airways in these situations give you a grace period of 24 hours in case this happens. Not Turkish.
Very distraught I wracked my brain for what to do as I now faced spending less than 5 full days on the beach for 3 and bit days of travel! I then phoned them back to ask about buying a single ticket out on my original planned date and then using my return ticket as planned. Again I spoke to a less than friendly and unhelpful customer service rep who informed my that this was also not an option. I would have thought Turkish Airlines should have jumped at the option of selling me a second ticket, especially as I am sure the currently climate and laptop restrictions on flights will be impacting their sales. I then complained via Twitter and got a much more friendly and helpful response – they lodged my issue as a complaint with customer services for me. Yay!
But no. I got an email from the customer complaints department that it would now take them around 7 days to get back to me! In 7 days time I had hoped to be in a flight and also needed to organise my accommodation! Why on earth would it take them that long to contact me?! To this day I have still not had a response from them, despite numerous follow up tweets. A swift response would have placated me, even if only to sell me that single ticket, but now days of silence later I am a very irate customer who is telling everyone I know, including some very frequent travelers who fly with Turkish (sorry … who used to fly with Turkish). The window for Turkish Airlines to retain me and my friends as customers is rapidly closing – if they do not want my money I am sure many other airlines do.
This experience contrasts with my other recent travel experience, namely with the Radisson Hotel in Austin. There I also complained about a few issues I had had at the hotel. Their response however was very prompt, courteous and professional. When I complained I really felt like I would never stay in a Radisson again but following their fantastic customer service they have managed to flip the situation and turned me into a loyal customer. I now know that if I ever have issues again I can trust this hotel to resolve them in a positive manner and as a result I will have no issue in picking the hotel over another hotel on my next trip.
I am generally a very loyal customer (last year paying close to £1000 more just to fly with British Airways) and I, like many other customers, am actually quite easy to please. Listen to me, respond to my contact request and treat me like a valued customer who you would like to retain. It is my money to spend and I can easily spend it with another company. Keep me happy, like British Airways always does, and I will tell people about my great experience and keep coming back. Make me unhappy, especially by treating me like you have no interest in my future spend with you, and I will tell everyone I know and take my money elsewhere.
Whilst a single customer may not per se be of interest to the company, their friends, family and extended network may be. As word of mouth spreads across that network, as is the case for United Airlines, you start to see a real impact on revenues. Counter that with the cost of good, courteous and helpful customer service, it just makes good business sense to treat your customers with respect – each and everyone of them.
Addendum
Within an hour of writing this post I received the following response from Turkish. I have no idea why it took them days to provide a standard response like this. It also does not address some of my issues that I complained about. You can see my response below too. Clearly I will not be flying with Turkish Airlines again and I will continue to advocate against flying with them. If you have had similar negative experiences with them I would love to hear about them too.
J&J strikes gold … and ignores it
So I was meant to write a summary of SXSW but I wanted to write about a post I saw today on J&J’s Facebook about autoimmune diseases (and in case you can’t be bothered to scroll through Facebook here the post on the J&J blog). There were a couple of things that struck me.
First the volume of engagement the post caused. It was not just a few standalone comments but people were in active discussion with each other. I have rarely seen that level of open, heartfelt conversation around a pharma post. The discussion also really resonated with me, as an autoimmune patient. The post was sharing the story of three autoimmune patients who overcame the struggles of their disease to get their lives back on track. Of course the thing that helped them all was pharmaceutical products and whilst no brand names were mentioned it is not a huge stretch of the imagination to realise they were talking about J&J products.
Whilst a few people were positive about the post, and how inspiring it was to see patients fight their disease and be able to overcome it and lead a relatively normal life, others had a very different point of view. What they pointed out that actually many patients do not have the option of “overcoming” their disease and leading a normal life. For many patients with an autoimmune disease there is no adequate treatment and daily life is a constant struggle.
In fact one lady pointed out that these types of articles actually can have an adverse effect on patients as friends and family share them to show that other patients have managed … so why can’t you? It can help foster the issue that many patients have were friends and family just do not get the struggle and perceive the disease to be something you can “get over” or something that is more in a patients head than being really that bad.
As an autoimmune patient myself I can tell you that despite medication (and I am 100% compliant btw) things do put me off kilter (like gluten). When I am off kilter I can feel absolutely bloody awful. It is not in my head – it is very real. In fact since my last post, where I spoke about my brain fog and fatigue, I’ve had to experience one of the other nasty glitches this disease causes – emotional “trauma”. I call it trauma because it is very upsetting. I have always been good at controlling my emotions and generally am a very level headed, laid back person but when my Hashimoto’s rears its ugly head my emotions can get all crazy. I would liken it to the emotional turmoil some women go through during their periods. One minute I’m fine and then next I’m bursting into tears. I become over-sensitive and the slightest thing can set me off and become a huge issue. The impact this can then have is that my over-reaction upsets me and makes me even more upset, spiralling down into an ever darker vortex. It can take days for me to be okay after this and can lead to my depression re-appearing.
I am fortunate that I know myself well enough, and have battled depression on and off over the years (thank you Hashi’s!) that I have some great coping mechanisms (and some awesome friends who I can talk to). Yesterday I was blubbing my eyes out, feeling like there was a raw gaping hole in my chest, today thanks to some of these coping mechanisms it is more like a small sore. Tomorrow I will still be fragile but hopefully with care and self-patience in a few days this will all be just a bad memory and I will have my life back. I am also fortunate that I have a job I love because it also really helps to just focus on my work and bury my head in that rather than dwell on the rollercoaster of emotions that is waging its own little war in my body.
And so I come onto my second point about the J&J post. With all of this engagement happening as I went through all the posts there was one glaring omission. There was absolutely no response from J&J! What a wasted opportunity to really engage in a meaningful dialogue with your customers (and yes your patients are also your customers – not just HCPs). Where was even the “thank you for your comments” type of response? Nothing. A classic pharma one directional post – a “here you go enjoy but we don’t want to talk to you” attitude. As an autoimmune patient I really welcome that J&J is sharing posts on this disease area, which gets so much less spotlight than cancer or heart disease, and yet impacts just as many, if not more, people. I would have liked to thank J&J for the post and the subsequent discussion and would have valued their input into the dialogue.
Yes we are talking about patients where J&J medications have not had this same positive impact but what a great opportunity to show that you still care – and perhaps if relevant to point out how much money you are investing into R&D in this area. It is also a fantastic opportunity to engage with patients and learn some valuable insights, which in turn could help generate even more engaging content. I could imagine this would make for a great tweetchat or other posts pulling out some of the issues highlighted in the discussion. Having worked for pharma brands I know the constant struggle to find that golden content that resonates and works. Here it is being handed to J&J on a platter.
J&J you hit gold with your post but rather than mine that gold, and share its riches, you have just let it lie and fade.
Oh and by the way one of the patients in the post also joined the conversation … making J&J’s absence all the more glaring. Hats off to the said patient – for sharing her story but also for the compassion, and openness with which she joined the discussion.
Final words from hell
This week, like thousands other around the world, I have been deeply moved by all the final messages that have been coming out of Aleppo thanks to Twitter. It really has moved me to tears reading these tweets that have been sent from what must surely feel like hell. It is heartbreaking to read these tweets that these desperate men, women and children are sending, detailing the horrors of Aleppo and in many cases saying their final farewells. Through social media we are able to hear their messages, we are able to follow and stay informed about life in this war zone from the civilians trapped inside.
On the one hand this is truly remarkable – especially given the besieged state of the city and the lack of western journalists in the city. Through social media we are able to hear first hand about what is happening – not through the words of professional journalists but by normal civilians trapped in the city. Local self-taught journalists have also been sending out reports, including drone footage of the devastation on the ground. Social media truly is placing the power of reporting news into the hands of ordinary people.
However there are also downsides. How totally demoralising and distressing it must to know that people are reading your tweets, your desperate pleas for help, and to know that you are able to tell people about the hell you are experiencing but to receive no help. To feel so powerless that you resort to sending final farewells out to a big wide world that does not seem to care – that appears to only read but not act.
Similarly as one of those people reading these tweets it is also distressing. I can only read the tweets but I am totally powerless to do much. I can sign petitions or contact my MP and demand action but I know that for many of those tweeting from Aleppo any help will come to late. I also realise that mass global outrage, as seen also through social media, appears to do very little and has not resulted in governments stepping in to stop this slaughter.
I only hope that those sending those tweets find some comfort in knowing that we out here in the world know of their suffering and that we hear their plight, even if we are powerless to do anything. I also really pray that those who send those final goodbyes will live to share their stories from safety and will be able to share their stories on social media post war, as they rebuild a country totally ripped apart by a brutal, senseless and disgraceful war.
Finally, being the animal lover that I am I also have to offer a prayer for the “cat man of Aleppo” and all the stray cats he cares for. Again thanks to social media we have been able to follow the amazing work this ambulance driver has been doing. With so much human suffering going on we often forget the animals that are also caught in this hell. They have no voice and no way of sharing their anguish and terror with the wider world. One very brave man though is there to be their voice and to care for them. When many fled he stayed to care for all the abandoned and stray cats showing the most incredible bravery. The pictures that he shares over Twitter also break my heart but there are also some heart-warming ones such as the little girl playing with a kitten that she adopted from him. What will happen to Alaa and his cats? I have no idea but I will continue to follow him on Twitter and hope that their story has a happy ending at the end of all this horror.
Social media & breaking down health stigma
This week I saw a really powerful video called “I had a black dog, his name was depression” which was developed by the WHO to talk about depression. Despite this video being a bit “long” at just over 4 minutes I watched it through to the very end. As someone who has had my own issues with the black dog over the years the video really resonated with me.
I have certainly had to make compromises in my life as a result of depression. Whilst people at work have never really seen the impact of my depression, my friends have. This is because when you suffer from depression you work really hard to hide it and to carry on and invariable you have to prioritise your energy. For me work has always won that prioritisation but that means that at the end of the day I had no energy left to meet with friends. In hindsight this may have exacerbated things as I had no one to talk to and just fought my battle on my own.
Today however things are different. Firstly I found out that my depression was actually a symptom not a stand-alone disease (it was in fact a result of my Hashimoto’s, for which I am now getting treatment). Secondly I decided that as someone who works in the healthcare industry I have a duty to stand up and be a voice for patients, to help break down the social stigma and the silence that goes with this, and many other diseases. I stopped making excuses to my friends (I’m busy, I have a cold, etc.) but become open and if I could not go out because of depression I told them. I was amazed at just how many of my friends then also came out and told me they too had had their own battles with depression. We started talking and it often really helped.
The other big change though that I have seen since my first bout of depression in my early twenties is the impact of social media. When I once posted on Facebook about it I had friends PM me to tell me how brave I was but also how it helped them to hear that they were not the only one having these battles. I did not think I was brave – I think I was just being passionate about the my obligations as a patient who works in the healthcare industry.
Social media also provides people with a forum where they can talk to others, anomalously if they want, and get support when they need it. I myself have written in the past about my involvement in talking a Facebook friend down from suicide via a Facebook group. The lady in particular had set up a closed group called “Goodbye” where she shared that she had had enough and had decided to end it. Members of the group included people from the US, Europe and Australia, so we really were able to provide her with 24 hour support. We were there for her and provided her with the friends and support she did not have offline, without which I am sure she would no longer be here today. Social media really did save a life.
The other benefit that I believe social media is bringing is to help break down the stigma and enabling people to talk openly, and show their support. By moving depression out of the dark and into the public domain it can help patients, and give them the confidence to talk to people and seek help. Knowing you are not alone can in itself be incredibly impactful.
Finally another thing to remember about depression is that it is not just a developed world problem. Not surprisingly depression is a huge issue in war torn countries or where people do not have a balanced diet (as is the case in areas of extreme poverty). In these countries however the stigma is still very big around depression and talking about health problems, and here having access to an online resource where you can be anonymous can really have a huge impact. Slowly as more people in these countries get access to the internet we may hopefully start to see technology starting to help improve the lives of patients in these countries.
We still have a long way to go to break down the stigma surrounding depression and mental health but social media is helping. The positive results should be seen not only in terms of patients quality of life but also economically as people get the support they need to be able to function and be productive at work. I personally never took a sick day because of my depression but I know many people who have. Reducing those sick days would be another great ROI for social media!
#WheresDon?
The fabulous Hope for Romanian Strays guest blogger Don has vanished! Can you find help him? He decided to take a Face-cation (a vacation from Facebook) but we now need him back to help with the charity birthday celebrations! We need your help to keep an eye out for him and share your photos of Don if you “spot” him – perhaps during your own vacation somewhere – being sure to include #WheresDon and the Hope for Romanian Strays logo in your photo too (#wheresdon).
This fun little campaign actually has a more serious side to it – we want to raise awareness of the Hope for Romanian Strays brand as the first part of an awareness campaign for our charity. Hope for Romanian Strays is a small, volunteer run, charity that rescues stray dogs in Romania. The campaign will be rolled out in a couple of stages, with #WheresDon as the first stage. This will be just one of the many initiatives we are launching for our 4th birthday, and was in fact inspired but a few complaints from some very active offline supporters who believe very strongly that the use of gamification and humour are totally inappropriate in the serious world of animal rescue. The fact that many large charity use these techniques successfully appears to be invalid. They do the most amazing work offline I might add and whilst they do not respect the work I do online I certainly respect the work they do offline.
So do you want to help us find Don and get him back in time to help with our birthday celebrations? I hope so! All you have to do is use a tool such as Pizap to photoshop Don into one of your own photos, such as a holiday snap, also add our logo (very important!) and the text #WheresDon. Once you are happy please share away tagging or mentioning the charity. If you like you can also use other relevant hashtags like #animalrescue etc.
Or perhaps if you “can’t find Don” you would prefer to photoshop in one of your own Romanian rescues? That’s fine too as long you include our logo and #WheresDon in the photo!
So please get busy and join the hunt for Don! Let’s see if we can find him and raise some awareness for Hope for Romanian Strays and at the same show that there is room for other ways of raising awareness and funds and that gamification and humour can in fact have a positive impact for a charity. Of course if you would rather just donate money to the charity instead that’s great too – the charity paypal is hopeforstrays.paypal@gmail.com! Just mention #WheresDon when you do so we know that this worked 🙂
De Puy and their patients
This morning I spotted an article in The Telegraph about how patients may have been fitted with faulty hip replacements due to a manufacturing error at the De Puy plant. According to the article De Puy is not being exactly responsive in answering questions on this and may have known about the problem for some time. Ill fitted hip replacements can be very painful for patients and can even be a patient safety issue.
For me a few things sprung out of this issue. First and foremost no healthcare manufacturer should ever ignore potential patient safety issues and if De Puy knew about this flaw they had a duty of care to their patients to inform the regulators so that said patients could be closely monitored for potential problems. We were all appalled by the recent car scandal where manufacturers lied and tried to ignore a manufacturing fault – but if De Puy did knowingly ignored this problem then they too deserve the same villification, if not more. After all here we are talking about surgically implanted devices not cars – and a potential direct risk to patient safety. After the healthcare’s efforts to address its reputation problems I will also be disgusted if this turns out to be another example of “big bad pharma” (whilst De Puy is a device company it is owned by pharma’s J&J).
Shocked at this news post I naturally went straight to the company’s home page to see if there was more news. Afterall if I were a patient or had a member of the family with a De Puy hip joint I would presume that the company has posted something to their website to provide me with information. I would also do the same if I worked for the media btw. I was therefore very shocked at what I found on their website.
According to their website they are inspired by us (I read that as including patients) and listen to patients and yet there is no option for patients on the website! As the image below shows they are only interested in HCPs, job seekers and vets. What about the poor patients? And indeed what about the general public and media?
In this day and age not having a general information website open to the public is questionable to say the least. This is doubly the case for devices which do not face the same strict regulatory requirements as pharma. Now clearly HCPs are the company’s main stakeholders, which is fair enough, but with most people now turning to the internet for information, including patient’s friends and family, it seems ludicrous not to offer up some general information about the product that is going to be surgically implanted into the patient. My mother is likely to need a hip replacement in the near future and I will want to know all the details about the product, including the manufacturer, and I will visit their website and expect to find information there.
This is of course also an issue today with new of a faulty product hitting the news. How can I trust a company that is apparently selling faulty hip replacements but refuses to acknowledge its end users the patients? How can I trust a company that refuses to communicate with me – even if only to tell me that due to regulatory requirements they cannot share certain information?
The other thing I did was to check their Twitter handle – again an issue like this raises questions I want to ask the company via my medium of choice, i.e. social media. Whilst it looks like someone has secured the Twitter handle that is as far as it goes. Whether it is De Puy or someone else who owns this is unclear but either way this looks bad on De Puy. Firstly if someone else has secured the handle then shame on De Puy for not having noticed this and resolved this issue. If it is their handle then at least take ownership and make it look formal and just state that you have not launched it yet. As it is it just further adds to my bad impression of De Puy.
I know I am just an insignificant carer and my mother just another patient but I for one will be talking to my parents about this and suggesting that if their surgeon suggests a De Puy product they ask for other options. I for one do not trust this company to insert a device into my mother. I wonder how many other carers and patients will feel the same as a result of today’s news and today’s lack of transparency from De Puy?
Social media in the pharmaceutical industry
This week I had the immense pleasure of attending SMI’s Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry conference. As always I enjoyed the event, catching up with many of the #hcsmeu twitterati and hearing insights from the industry and patients.
The event started for me on Tuesday as I led a workshop looking at how pharma can successfully engage using social media (you can find my presentation here). With a small group we discussed some of the common issues that we still face in this space, for example internal barriers, lack of adequate process and poor understanding of this channel.
Most of these issues have been around for many years now and it does sadden me that they still need to be addressed in so many pharmacos. On the other hand it is great to be able to have a much richer and deeper set of case studies to use in the battle in bringing some of these barriers down. “We can’t because of regulations” clearly no longer cuts it – regulations have been clearly shown to not be a barrier. Another element that appears to still be an issue, and which saddens me greatly, is the view that social media does not need to be approached strategically. Whilst I am a huge advocate of pharma companies getting involved in social media I do not condone or recommend doing social media for the sake of it. There does need to be a clear strategy and plan – otherwise you are just taking pot shots in the dark – and frankly doing any form of business, marketing or communication without a strategy is just plain old bad business.
I was very happy however to see on Day 1 of the conference Stine Sorensen from Lundbeck discussing strategy, and not only its importance but the importance of having a regularly updated strategy (in this case she updates it every 6 months). I was also very happy to hear Stine mention that she now has the review & approval time for social media content down to 25minutes. I have had quite a few clients tell me that 24 hour approval times are unrealisitic so it is great to be able to counter this with the fact that quite a few companies now have process in place for near-to-live response. Not being able to respond very rapidly due to inappropriate review & approval process should no longer be a barrier (and mini self plug – I can help you work this out). In fact Stine supported everything I always say – there is no longer any room for excuses around not doing social media. Those days are gone and, as her slides so beautifully shows, excuses are useless!
Another great presentation was given by my friend Jackie Cuyvers, who recently left ZS to set up her own social listening company. Jackie is an extremely experienced social listener and she now specialises in doing global / local listening. Besides flagging the importance of asking the right, business questions, she talked us through some of the implications of social listening, in particular some of the linguistic and cultural elements that we tend not to think about. She mentioned how even in the same language there are big differences across countries and groups in use of terminology. In the UK for example “pants” means something quite different from “pants” in the US (underwear versus trousers) or the term “good crack” which means different things in the US and Ireland. She also made the point that just translating content directly often totally overlooks cultural nuances and local idiosyncrasies. In English for example we use the term “kick the bucket” but in Slovenia the translation of this term would be “whispering with crabs”. This has potentially huge implications on companies running social listening research, especially if they are dependend on pure technology or English language researchers. I also loved the fact that Jackie got an image of a dog into the conference – tres social!
Jackie’s summary of the 3 steps to social listening
One emphasis that came through throughout the conference though was the importance of patients and the incredible role they play, and the huge value that social media brings to them. The event was actually kicked off by three fabulous ladies, Birgit Bauer, Silja Chouquet and Marlo Donato Love who shared some great insights from a patient’s perspective and mentioned one of my favourite quotes “patients are the most underutilised resource in the pharmaceutical industry”. They talked about the importance of getting patients involved and the role they can play in working with pharma. Silja then also went on to talk about patients participating and “attending” medical conference virtually via social media. In fact she raised the point that whilst doctor’s are the main participants online at conferences patients are also increasingly getting involved as they search for more information on their conditions. She also made some great points about the futility of pharma’s current approach to using promoted tweets and how this is potentially going to be a big issue resulting in dilution of high value content on Twitter.
Perhaps a highlight for me though was Trevor Fossey who talked us through the impact of digital on patients and the NHS. I was nearly crying as he told us that he has access to his NHS medical record online, and that of this wife for whom he cares, and that as of 1st April every NHS patient has a right to access their medical record online. OMG! As a UK patient, with a chronic autoimmune disease, not having access to my medical records has been a big issue. I have been to numerous doctors, privately in the UK and abroad, and have never been able to show them my NHS blood results as I did not have access to them. Of course the fact that I now live abroad and don’t have a GP means in all liklihood I still won’t be able to access them but the realisation of what this means for other UK patients, including my elderly parents, was profound. Trevor mentioned some fantastic points about how impactful empowered patients really are – and how much money they save the NHS. I can tell you I was certainly not the only person in the room blown away but Trevor’s presentation – despite being a room full of digitally savvy people none of us where aware of our right to access our medical records online. Trevor found himself a whole group of advocates at the event (I for one have alreay shared to news to all my UK friends and family).
There were so many other great presentations, such as Letizia Affinito who showed us some great non-pharma case studies, and Pinal Patel from BMS who showed us how they are using social media in clinical trials – and more importantly how they are listening to patients and adapting their process in response to patient feedback. An awesome point was made that often once a trial is over patients are just left alone – but really we should be thanking them and sharing the results with them (something BMS plans to do now thanks to feedback). Charlotte Roth from Actelion also gave the Corporate POV around social media, bringing an additional dimension to the conference, while Liz Skrbkova shared perspectives around multi-channel engagement and online influencers. I also have to add that IMHO Liz was one of the best dressed ladies at the event 🙂
Last but not least was the pleasure of meeting all these amazing people and having some great discussions, including over wine and dinner. Dinner also gave me the opportunity to catch up with a couple more of the #hcsmeu and the next day I was able to sample some of the most amazing cocktails at the Alchemist in the evening. Afterall what would a social media conference be if it didn’t include the “social” bit!
Cheers!
