Health apps – bringing order to chaos?

There’s rarely a shortage of mobile health news these days, but a couple of developments over the last month transcended the general noise about mHealth.

A new NHS online library of health apps and promises from the US FDA that guidance on medical smartphone apps will arrive before the end of this year threaten, as my column in the April issue of PME put it, to bring some order to the chaos of mHealth apps.

That said, initiatives like the NHS library, Happtique’s mobile app certification programme, Apple’s new lists of apps for healthcare professionals and my own pharma mobile app listing in the Digital Handbook, to name but a few, could soon have us asking who will curate the curators.

Elsewhere the April issue’s features included an interview with Novo Nordisk’s Peter Meeus and an engaging look at some emerging models for pharmaceutical businesses.

• Read April’s PME online

Escaping conventional pharma marketing orbits

If I had to précis my latest Digital Intelligence column, which this month covered our forthcoming Velocity event, it would probably read something like: come to London, learn a lot from a bunch of digital experts.

The slightly longer version would perhaps mention that sessions at the day-long event in May will include:

• Health and social search by Google

• Customer analytics by Adobe

• User experience (UX) by IBM

• The future of pharma digital by GSK

And the full length version of the column can be read in the March issue of PME. Meanwhile, full details of Velocity, which we’re running in partnership with Digitally Sick, can be found on PMLiVE.

The March issue also marked a change in my role at PMGroup, with a promotion to editorial director, some 14 months after I joined the company.

The BIA’s Steve Bates and Pfizer’s Man MOT (PME February 2013)

The new issue of PME (Pharmaceutical Market Europe) was out last week and with it my interview with the BIA’s chief executive Steve Bates.

His great analogy of pharma-biotech relations in the 1990s being ‘a bit Blur and Oasis‘ didn’t make it into the feature, but there was plenty of room to focus on the ecosystem pharma and biotech share nowadays, the state of UK biotech and the sector’s funding challenges.

This month’s Digital Intelligence column looked at a rare example of a pharma campaign with a definite exit strategy in the shape of Pfizer’s Man MOT online male health clinic, a campaign I’ve covered right from its early pilot stages.

In contrast to the interview the column did have room for a couple of musical references, Radiohead in the headline and a short Leonard Cohen misquotation at the end.

• Read the February 2013 issue of PME

PME December/January 2013

The latest issue of PME (Pharmaceutical Market Europe) was out this week and it ended up being nicely heavy on ‘digital’.

There was, as usual, my Digital Intelligence column, which this issue covered the EU’s eHealth plans and what they could mean for pharma.

But there was also my first Digital Yearbook, which covered 2012′s headline treads, reviewed the year and looked at what 2013 may offer the industry.

Finally, there was the latest entrant in PMGroup’s 10 Ways … series, which this time offered 10 Ways … to activate digital opinion leaders.

• Read the December/January 2013 issue of PME

Social media – a mainstream communications tool for pharma

The latest Digital Intelligence column highlighted what I see as the pharmaceutical industry’s rising comfort levels with social media – at least when it comes to corporate communications.

It’s a view that provoked a few raised eyebrows when it appeared in print, but taking an industry-wide overview it’s undeniable that pharma companies are using a wider range of social media channels than ever before – there’s certainly plenty of evidence of that within my Digital Handbook.

It’s also clear that social media has become a mainstream corporate communications activity, somewhat inevitably given the way communications in general have changed with the rise of the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

Whether social media use is widespread outside comms or whether the most effective use is made of the different channels available are both questions for another day.

Digital Intelligence in PME, September and October 2012

Time for a quick roundup of my recent, new look, Digital Intelligence columns from PME.

The magazine got a gentle redesign in September and, in keeping with this, I started taking a longer, more thoughtful look at issues in Digital Intelligence.

First up was a critical look at the usability and discoverability of pharma content in September’s PME followed, in the October issue, by some thoughts on Boehringer Ingelheim’s Facebook game Syrum.

The digital pharma news that previously made up the Digital Intelligence section can still be found online in the Digital Intelligence blog and, playing around with Delicious tag bundles, links to blog highlights are featured each month.