Guess what? Docs are blogging too

Mar/17/2008 04:26 Filed in: Web 2.0 ?
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About 1% of all blogs deal with health, according to a 2006 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Many are by consumers writing about their own health issues, but "the numbers of health care providers who are blogging is steadily growing," says Fard Johnmar, founder of Envision Solutions, a New York health care marketing firm. Why not Blog? As hard as it to believe physicians are people too and are as confused about healthcare issues as we all are.


Blogs are a chance to express ones self but they are also a opportunity to reach out to other physicians and patients to gain understanding of the challenges that today's HCP's go through. The business model for physicians is very complicated and they often must spend hours upon hours on paperwork just to get paid and make ends meet. If anyone wonders why physicians don't have time to meet with sales reps anymore they should spend a couple of days with doctors observing all the paperwork they have to submit. On top of this pharma expects physicians to keep up to date on the latest drug developments, label changes and controversies around prescription drugs. It's easy to see why share of voices is getting harder and harder to breakthrough.


Pharma needs to change NOW how it tries to interact with physicians. The idea of cutting down the sales force within a company so that multiple sales reps from the same company don't call on physicians is a great step but it assumes that the remaining sales people will be able to meet with the physician and detail the key brand messages. Most physicians are harder to meet than the President of the United States right now but Blogging may be a way for them to share experiences and learn from each other and that's what the Web is all about.


Remember our job as marketers is to act as aggregators to bring people together and the Internet is the perfect platform to do this. Someday pharma may enter the Web 2.0 world and interact with its audience but that day is still a distant dream.


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