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Doximity tapping into deep rooted peer relationships

Image courtesy of Doximity

A couple of years ago we started noticing a striking trend. While adoption of physician-only social networks was growing relatively slowly, physicians were pointing to their colleagues and peers as a top resource for professional information and source of influence around clinical matters. The dynamics of peer-to-peer relationships among physicians are of course complex and run deep. As a physician I experienced this first hand. In fact, the Hippocratic Oath, which many know of as the ‘no harm’ dictum, also talks about the deep brotherhood and apprenticeship model of physicians: “To consider dear to me, as my parents, him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and, if necessary, to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art.” 

We focused on the various components of physician networking in our most recent physician study Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012. As mentioned in an earlier post, adoption of physician-only social networks remained flat between 2011 and 2012. However we discovered that physicians don’t use this kind of forum in part because they prefer one-to-one communications over one-to-many – common to social networking platforms when it comes to professional issues. 

With this in the background, we recently had a briefing with Bob MacAvoy, SVP of Innovation at Doximity. As you may know Doximity was established in 2011 by the founders of Epocrates. We were very excited to learn that Doximity’s approach seems to center around facilitating activities or behaviors physicians already have rather than introducing new ones. For example, doing away with anonymity. Doctors have full profiles and are identifiable the way they are in the real medical world. Similarly Doximity has identified physicians’ continued reliance on fax transmission and instead of trying to replace this channel, introduced a feature that allows physicians to send and receive faxes directly from their mobile phones or the Doximity website. Other interesting features include built-in patient referral forms, hospital directories, and call schedules, as well as a multi-filter user database search tool. Doximity has developed a very interesting spatial visualization of how physician specialties are interacting with each other on the platform (see image illustrating one viewing angle of the interactive tool). 

I was also impressed by the fact that physicians effectively claim their profiles which have already been built out for them rather than having to fill out long registration and personal information forms. I’d love to have that done for me. 

We look forward to keeping an eye on Doximity and other physician-only social networks in our future research and seeing how this space continues to evolve.

Source: Bob MacAvoy, SVP Innovation, Doximity, Blog.Doximity.Com, Manhattan Research Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012

Posted by Christina Anthogalidis, Principal Analyst

Digital Health and Pharma Quizzo

Image courtesy of clipart.com

After a particularly rough Quizzo loss last night (probably not a good life sign when the only answer in the literature round you know is about The Hunger Games…), I realized that we hadn’t posted a digital health and pharma quizzo round in a while. Take a stab at the below questions and enjoy the rest of the short week!

Name the web clipping service (which functions as something between Pinterest and Evernote) that launched to the public today.

At which conference did Mary Meeker unveil her new Internet Trends report this week?

According to our new Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012 study, how many physicians own a tablet?

A high school freshman recently made headlines for a simple detection method of this disease.

What animal did Google name its latest search engine algorithm update?

A new study published by Clinical Therapeutics found that this significantly increased medication adherence? 

For the first time, this technology will be used at the upcoming London Olympics to manage athlete care.

According to our latest report, physicians have better experiences with iPad Reps when they get to do this. 

Which social network is planning to launch its own smartphone next year?

Bucking the Social Network Trend

Image courtesy of clipart

Two of us here at Manhattan Research have been at odds over how physician adoption of social networks will evolve. The other analyst believed strongly that growth in physician-only social networks was inevitable because, among many reasons, using social networking platforms is becoming a core part of millions of people’s civilian and professional lives. Facebook’s user base is at 900 million, climbing rapidly, and LinkedIn reported theirs at 161 million in March 2012. Indeed, adoption of physician-only social networks grew 50% from 2010 to 2011, reaching about one-quarter of U.S. practicing physicians.  

The results of our annual physician study settled this part of our dispute: According to our new Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2012 study, adoption of physician-online networks is flat. This year we probed more deeply into this topic so have a clearer understanding why. In addition to saying they don’t have time to using these services (read: no value to changing my workflow), physicians told us they prefer to get information elsewhere online and communicate with peers by one-to-one not one-to-many media. We also discovered that when it comes to discussing clinical matters, physicians still hold the relationships they established in medical school or during training in high regard, significantly more so than those that they formed online.

The other analyst did have greater vision when it came to physician adoption of LinkedIn. I expected very slow growth for physicians, not clearly seeing the utility for physicians of this platform. In fact, adoption of LinkedIn for professional reasons grew 64% between 2011 and 2012, reaching about one quarter of physicians.  We thankfully agreed on professional use of Facebook – that declined significantly to 11%, and we continue to agree that this will crash to single digits in 2013.

In this year’s study, we also carried out extensive research on how physicians communicate with one another, which kinds of relationships they leverage for clinical matters, in addition to many other topics. We’d love to hear your reaction to these new findings - please email blog@manhattanresearch.com with your thoughts.

Evolving Role of the Pharmacist

Image courtesy of time_anchor on flickr

We’ve blogged before about increasing interest in the role that pharmacists play in providing patient care and support throughout the treatment continuum. And findings from our ePharma Consumer® 2011 study of consumer digital pharma trends show that pharmacists are a key source of treatment information, with 43 percent of online U.S. adults reporting that they learn about prescription drugs from pharmacists, beating out friends and family, nurses, and various traditional media channels. 

A few examples have cropped up in recent months highlighting the “pharmacist as consultant”, a trend that we expect to continue as major pharmacy chains and retailers push further into the care delivery space over the next few years.

Walgreens “Find Your Pharmacist” allows consumers to locate pharmacists tailored to health needs

Walgreens has been a trailblazer pushing forward the pharmacy care delivery trend – and the company’s new “Find Your Pharmacist” tool speaks to their desire for pharmacists to be a key patient partner. The online tool assists consumers in finding pharmacists that meet their specific health needs (including clinical backgrounds or expertise, specialties, and languages). And as Walgreens president of pharma, health and wellness Kermit Crawford notes, “The pharmacist-patient relationship can be very instrumental in helping to improve health outcomes because patients often are talking with their pharmacist more often than their primary care physician.”

Pharmacies are leaders in mobile Rx initiatives

Pharmacists are on front lines of dispensing medicine and are well positioned to support adherence. Major pharmacy chains and retailers have been particularly innovative in using mobile to this end, with Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Target, and Walmart all offering some sort of mobile Rx refill or reminder service. Rite Aid, a bit later to the game than its competitors, just launched its Rx Refill app this past March, and Walgreens pushed further ahead by adding medication reminder alerts to its app recently. 

Pfizer UK puts a focus on pharmacists

Pfizer UK recently launched an online portal for pharmacists, Access Pharma for Professionals, which has a section devoted to providing pharmacists with patient support materials to promote a “quality patient experience” – a sign that some pharmas are exploring the pharmacy as an alternative patient touch point.

We’ll be looking at the pharmacists’ take and what they want from pharma in future months with our new Taking the Pulse® Pharmacists study, so look out for more posts on that later.

Posted by Maureen Malloy, Senior Healthcare Analyst

Buddy Media - Game Changer for YouTube Marketing

We’ve all seen how TV shows and brands have leveraged YouTube channels to capture and interact with audiences, whether it be the American Idol channel or Lilly Health Channel. These channels are divided into categories such as entertainment and sports, and provide featured contents for users. However, for those brand clients who have been left out of the game, the biggest hurdle hindering them has been the lack of necessary tools that enable them to create their own channels.

That is all about to change with Buddy Media, a social marketing platform that allows clients to customize their own YouTube channels from interactive apps and videos to opinion polls and photo galleries. Buddy Media’s customization capability, along with its large client base and funding, should be a strong incentive for clients to make YouTube marketing a priority. More importantly, brand channels open doors to further enrich brand relationships with consumers. With the number of YouTube visitors still continuing to increase, brands need to capitalize on this opportunity.

Our ePharma Consumer® 2011 study indicates that only 8% of online consumers are using YouTube channels as online resources from a pharma company. There are countless media and entertainment channels out there currently but only limited brand channels. There could be a huge potential in the market for brand clients to reach out to untapped demographics by customizing their channels to cater to consumer’s interest and the time to do so is now. 

Posted by Hiro Sato, Research Associate

Physicians Go Back to the 80s with Septris

Image courtesy of tywkiwdbi 

As a child of the 80s - loving the John Hughes movies, synth music, and of course the out-to-there hairstyles - I was excited to see a reference to the block-fitting video game Tetris while reading an article in Healthcare IT News. Septris is a game intended to help hospital-based healthcare professionals with sepsis identification and management. Septris is provided through many platforms and CME credit is offered. What a great way for physicians to learn on-the-go!  

I often see consumers playing games on their commute.  My husband is a big fan of Tanks and Turrets.  Use of games for health purposes is still low among consumers, but we do find that games have more potential to encourage certain therapeutic categories to regularly use pharma resources compared to the average online population. What are you waiting for Dr. Mario?! You are primed to enter the consumer space. 

Stay tuned for new physician gaming data in our upcoming Taking the Pulse® Global 2012 research. For now enjoy some free Tetris while listening to the most awesomely bad 80s song.

Posted by Erika Fishman-Klein, Senior Director of Research

Social TV

Photo courtesy of stickwithjosh on flickr

My earliest social TV experience was back in high school when my girl friends and I would “meet” on AOL instant messenger to watch the latest Gilmore Girls or Dawson’s Creek episode. Now there are tons more options – some pretty cool ones reviewed in this social TV app article from iMediaConnection – and as the article points out, TV is far from dead, though how consumers interact with entertainment has evolved greatly. Even as I watched the premiere of Mad Men last week with my actual in-the-flesh friends, I was checking Twitter on my phone to see the reactions to Megan’s bizarre song and dance and Pinterest for pics of 60s appetizers that people were serving at their viewing parties.

This engagement is great for strengthening relationships between viewers and shows, but marketers of course want to figure out how they can leverage this behavior for their own brands. And for pharma, finding the right way to do is as always many times more challenging – both from a regulatory perspective as well as because consumers have mixed feelings about the type of relationship they want to have with pharma (e.g., I’m happy to share my love of Wawa on Facebook though I may not want my friends to know I’m playing a game or watching a video related to whatever medication I’m taking). However, our ePharma Consumer® shows that among online smartphone owners looking up Rx info on their phones, more than a third are doing so while watching TV – so this phenomenon is something our clients are definitely keeping their eye on and something we’ll also be digging into more deeply in upcoming studies.

Posted by Maureen Malloy, Senior Healthcare Analyst

Call Center Rage

As I sat on the bus on my way to work this morning listening to the woman next to me yell at what seemed to be her wireless carrier, I wondered why it is that I haven’t seen more seminars, research and the like about call center rage. I think it can be even nastier than road rage. We’ve known personally and through blogs, etc. all about consumers’ plight with IVR mazes and companies who just won’t let you cancel anything. What happens to these service employees that absorb the irritation of customers?

This then made me wonder how pharma is going to cope with consumer demand for service around prescription drugs. In our recent ePharma Consumer® 2011 study more than an astounding one-third of online consumers said they are interested in communicating with a pharma company to get a personalized answer about a prescription drug and another 30 odd percent were neutral (i.e., not opposed to the idea). This is much higher than we expected; doctors have been the go-to person up until now. As pharma companies talk to us about being more than ‘pill companies’, the topic of how to talk to consumers about very complex and delicate issues around Rx will become increasingly critical (and costly). We’ll be researching more about how nurses, pharmacists, and other health care professionals might be used in this regard.

I am declaring April Be Kind To Call Center Reps month.  

Posted by Monique Levy, VP of Research

Pfizer’s YouTube win

Photo courtesy of thms.nl on flickr

I just came across Pfizer’s Viagra YouTube Channel this week. If you haven’t already seen it, take a good look; it’s excellent. The look and feel is perfect for the counterfeit theme; the content is ideally suited for video where experts can be showcased and the manufacture of fakes can be shown. There is a clear, patient-friendly user guide to finding real Viagra online, and a link to online pharmacies that sell verified Viagra. In this campaign, Pfizer manages to convey a caring tone for the patient and provide practical service. Over the past two years, our research has shown a strong increase in consumer demand for practical and tangible help from pharma: financial assistance (e.g., co-pay cards), access to experts, and even a relatively strong demand for pharma to be active on patient communities, among others. Brands worn down by regulatory constraints can look over the fence to PR campaigns for motivation and hope. 

Posted by Monique Levy, Vice President of Research

ePharma Summit Provides a Fun and Important Kickoff Event for Manhattan Research’s 2012 Agenda

ePharma Summit is a timely kickoff for the 2012 Manhattan Research calendar. A preseason bowl game, if you will. Many of the events attendees and speakers are instrumental in shaping our research agenda and we’re grateful for their views and support.  It’s nice to see many of our clients in a midtown Manhattan ballroom under 7th Avenue that features a small army of technology advocates cheering and contesting the complexities we face and the solutions we pitch. All of this takes place while a Peruvian flute band plays down the street across Times Square from a team of break dancers. The Giants have won the Super Bowl and it’s warm outside. The party has officially started and for two days the discussions help galvanize our key research objectives for several of Manhattan Research’s Global market research studies which are in the late stages of planning. Following the event we finalize programming for questionnaires for 4000 physicians across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The data will be available in Q2 with a rush to get insights to our members. The feedback we receive from events like ePharma Summit is vital to our research and it keeps our firm most relevant in a difficult space. Great conferences provide the necessary chatter on real issues we consider closely with our subscribers and we work closely to address these high curveballs with survey research and advisory content. We even talked to non pharma representatives like Gatorade to hear the thirst quencher’s social strategies and how we can tie them to pharma. Whether the debates range from mobile behavior trends to social media challenges to emerging pain points, all of them seem to involve Facebook and the iPad but we still leverage events like this to continuously map our topical agenda to pressing problems that can be solved realistically with quality research. By late spring we’ll have new data and insights to assist hundreds of healthcare stakeholders and perhaps set the stage for further debate during the key summer and fall events. Perhaps some will even carry over to ePharma Summit ’13. I’ve been attending digital pharma events with Manhattan Research since 2004 and it’s safe to say interest and investment in the space has gained significant momentum, especially in certain areas like mobile and physician customer service. Let’s look forward to studying them closely and answering the call in the months ahead. We can and look back at the February Summit experience to see what we’ve uncovered. 

Posted by Lem Sanders, Director of Business Development

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