Olympic gold medal winner Laura Trott OBE is supporting charity Asthma UK as the face of its online resource for young people.

Trott, 20, who won two gold medals in track cycling at the London 2012 Olympics, has suffered from severe asthma – her career is a testament to the successful management of this long-term condition.

Asthma UK’s award-winning Facebook page Big Up Your Chest provides health information and a forum for 16–25 year olds living with asthma.

The charity supports over five million young people living with asthma, and aims to halve their hospitalisation rate over the next five years.

As a young child, Trott developed severe asthma and took up sport to help her regulate her breathing.

“I was overjoyed when I won two gold medals for track cycling at the London 2012 Olympics – I couldn't believe how far I'd come and I was so proud to fly the flag for Britain!” she said.

“I was able to achieve these amazing victories because I manage my asthma by taking my medicines and making sure I’m looking after my condition sensibly. It still impacts me physically as I tend to get a dry cough after I’ve been training, so I have to be aware of my limits.

“I hope that I can inspire other people my age with asthma through my own accomplishments and show that with the right treatment, management and attitude to asthma, it doesn’t have to hold you back.”

David Hiles, Head of Health Promotion at Asthma UK, commented: “We are thrilled to have Laura on board. Her fantastic achievements make her a huge inspiration to young people with asthma, who can ensure they are managing their condition properly by using the Big Up Your Chest page.”

Fearless pharma blogger Maxine Vaccine prepares for her new job with a trip to Matalan, the Body Shop and the online NHS.

Yes, it’s true. After the Bank Holiday I’m starting a new job. Those lovely people at Pharmajobs helped me look for the right role, employer and region, put me in touch with specialist agencies and companies that matched my aspirations and talents. And then my line manager at Munchkin Pharma said “Would you like a new role?”

She explained about key account management. No more sales pitch blues, no more marketing message Mondays, no more NLP courses, no more free samples. A new life of consultative selling – providing solutions – being an expert on who you’re selling to rather than what you’re selling. In short, a proper grown-up job. Finally, she asked me: “Do you have any questions?”

I said: “Will I need a new outfit?”

My manager gave me her famous tight smile. “Ah yes, that’s something else we need to discuss. That attitude of yours.”

But seriously, what is changing in my professional life is the shift from a ‘lone wolf’ approach – hitting the road with one goal in mind, only talking when there’s a product to be sold, regarding my colleagues as deadly rivals, living just to put ticks beside names on my list – to a sense of being embedded in a dynamic professional network of stakeholders across various sectors. Every day brings new people and new ideas.

I’m not just a lonely sales functionary, I’m one of many points of contact between a changing company and its changing customer base, and my role is to communicate and learn, to work out how Munchkin Pharma can meet customer needs across a local healthcare landscape that is changing so fast it feels like the NHS has become a computer game. I feel more connected to my own colleagues as well as to the people with whom I’m building commercial relationships.

Instead of the false personalisation of sales – the fake smile, the fluttered eyelashes, the lowered voice – there’s the real personal engagement of understanding what your customer wants to achieve, the customer understanding what you want to achieve, and the common ground on which you both take a step forward. That only happens when you think hard instead of just talking hard.

Farewell to the black book, hello to the iPad. And what’s commanding my attention for much of the working day is the increasingly widespread and diverse character of the NHS online. It’s not just who is commissioning and prescribing, it’s how, for whom, on what basis and according to which budget. If the NHS had a Facebook profile its relationship status would be ‘It’s complicated.’

This weekend, I’m getting my hair reshaped and my wardrobe restocked. I’m partying in my usual restrained style. Another day for rest and recuperation, and I’ll be ready for the working week. And then the real fun will start.

Social Networking is set to play a key role in delivery of new models of healthcare, a new report predicts.

Interactive websites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are expected to be utilised by providers of healthcare in Europe to help tackle existing and future challenges.

The report, Cooperation, Communication, Coordination: Three Pillars of Collaborative Teamwork anticipates networking sites to be used to increase awareness in disease management and clinical trial recruitment.

Faced with issues such as cost constraints, ageing populations, a higher incidence of chronic diseases, regulatory pressures and the need for improved quality of care and patient safety, the report says effective teamwork is needed to implement new delivery methods.

Alongside social networking, the report highlights cooperation between different divisions, access to real-time data and mobile technologies as also playing an important part in delivering these new healthcare models.

“Teamwork and collaboration are often used synonymously, but they are not the same,” said Jan Duffy, EMEA Research Director, IDC Health Insights – who conducted the report.

“Effective collaboration may be viewed as either a process which affects the results of teamwork – enhanced patient care and provider satisfaction – or an outcome in and of itself. Whether or not it is an ingredient or a by-product of teamwork, it is certain that the seamless provision of quality patient care today and in the future depends on inter-professional collaboration.”

Boehringer Ingelheim will beta-test its new game Syrum, in which players take on the roles of pharmaceutical company leaders, on Facebook in March.

Syrum, which Boehringer compares to FarmVille and Pokemon, aims to educate the public about the challenges facing the pharma industry and the high stakes of the healthcare market.

Participants take on the challenge of innovative drug development and market access, as well as longer-term issues such as patent expiry, with the ultimate goal of saving “the health of the world”.

The game is based on Facebook: players can use the social network to earn in-game rewards and collaborate with their ‘Facebook friends’ on R&D.

The ‘soft launch’ of Syrum follows months of development to strengthen its narrative and educational content. The game is aimed at the pharma industry, service companies, health professionals, medical schools and even patient groups.

According to Boehringer’s Head of Online Communications, John Pugh, Syrum aims to “enter into a dialogue with stakeholders” and “explain some of the reasons why we do what we do”.

Speaking at the Pharmaceutical Industry conference in London, Pugh said that for Syrum players, “If perhaps you watch a video for a minute around COPD or answer a quick questionnaire about atrial fibrillation, then you might get that free microprocessor or a little robot for your lab.

“We see it as a real opportunity to raise disease awareness in a fun and engaging way.”

Pfizer has been crowned the leading pharmaceutical company for their presence on Facebook and Twitter, a new study has found.

Cegedim Strategic Data (CSD) found the pharma-giant had the third-most ‘likes’ on Facebook and had more followers on Twitter than industry rivals. Novartis were ranked overall in second with Merck & Co in third position.

Christopher Wooden, Vice President, Promotion Audits for CSD, says the audit highlights how the industry is improving its social media footprint.

The study was conducted worldwide and focused on the top 100 pharmaceutical companies in terms of traditional sales force and marketing channel spending. CSD then identified the top 30 pharma companies for their presence and healthcare-focused activities on Twitter and Facebook.

Behind Pfizer, Novartis was ranked seventeenth for ‘likes’ on Facebook and overall fifth on Twitter for its number of followers. Merck – which came first for the number of pages on Facebook – ranked tenth for the number of ‘likes’ it has received, third for the number of ‘tweets’ it has made on Twitter and fifteenth for its followers.

CSD found that J&J is second for the number of ‘likes’ on Facebook with Roche occupying the same position for its number of followers on Twitter.

“The CSD social media audit shows clearly that most major life science companies are establishing a presence in social media – but coverage, methods and sophistication do vary significantly,” said Christopher Wooden.

“In broad terms we see an attempt by companies to reach out and create a positive, on-going message about their contribution to better health. The ability to target that message and encourage constructive dialogue through social media will bring value to companies developing this new channel.”

Despite huge investments into CRM systems some pharma companies still struggle to get all of their staff to embrace and fully interact with them. Pf’s Iain Bate explores why, and what the future holds for technology in the industry.

There’s no doubt that technological developments have changed the way we live and work from year to year – maybe even from month to month in the 21st Century. But has the world of healthcare been travelling in the slow lane of the intergalactic highway?

The potential that technology offers to pharma, and the general world of healthcare, is enormous. But is the pharmaceutical industry, and its staff in particular, using it to maximise the returns of billion-dollar investments?

It would seem that technology is the ‘buzz word’ on the lips of a few of healthcare’s major players at present. The DH recently invited people to nominate their favourite health-related mobile phone ‘app’ – be it for keeping fit, to locate a hospital or chemist, or helping to manage an illness. Creative minds were also asked to design their own health app with a panel of DH judges deciding on their favourite from the most popular entries.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley says it’s the Government’s intention to give people better access to information using modern technology and the exercise is a “unique opportunity for the NHS and those who develop apps to not only showcase their work, but to bring to life new ideas and realise true innovation in healthcare”.

As part of the DH’s technology revolution, patients may also soon be offered online consultations with their GPs using programmes such as Skype. Clearly the Government is embracing the convenience technology offers to patients, but are other sectors in healthcare as interested? It would seem there is still some way to go.

 

In two minds

Pf ’s 2010/11 annual Company Perception, Motivation and Satisfaction Survey suggests that not all respondents are completely convinced by the power of technology in the workplace. Although the Survey – which relates to 2010 and the early part of this year – found that nearly 90% of respondents have access to a CRM system, only 43% find time to use it in the field and more than a fifth of people fail to accurately record post-call reports with important clients.

Questions have to be asked as to why, despite multimillion pound investment and training by pharma companies, there remains a percentage of staff that still ignore the power and potential of the technology at their finger tips.

Results from the Survey reveal there’s no difference in uptake by key account managers, primary and secondary care representatives, those in primary care roles only, firstline sales managers and secondline sales managers and the use of CRM technology between differing age groups – although surprisingly 10% of respondents in these positions with less than two years of experience said they did not have a CRM system, compared to just 5% more experienced colleagues.

The launch of the iPad in March 2010 promised to revolutionise the way sales representatives, and those in similar roles, use CRM systems in the field. However, nearly three-quarters (70%) of respondents from the Survey are still presently sent out with laptops containing their customer-relationship systems.

When quizzed on what they’d change about the hardware which houses their system, the majority of respondents said that their CRM was too awkward to carry, with poor running systems an issue and that batteries ran out too quickly. Apple claims its second-generation iPad now enjoys ten hours of use away from a plug socket in the field.

Yet the switch to the latest convenient tablet devices may not necessarily be about high levels of investment, it may be down to maximising value for money as Paul Shawah, Vice President, Multi Channel Strategy, Veeva Systems explains. “I would say the life cycle of devices within the industry is generally about three years, sometimes a little bit longer,” he said. “When a company invests in new technology they typically depreciate that over that period, so they don’t want to replace it in the field for that time to maximise their investment.

“However, with the introduction of game changing technology like the iPad, this has changed. We see a number of our pharmaceutical customers are justifying the business case to move to the iPad even before their tablets are fully depreciated. This speaks to the business benefit that pharma expects to achieve from the iPad and the related applications only available on that device.”

A convenient shield

Despite technology eliminating mundane process in the workplace and offering the potential to assist employees and improve their efficiency at work, it has historically been used as a shield to mask poor performance and abused as a means to waste company time – a recent online survey by AOL found that nearly half of Americans (44.7%) rank surfing the web as their primary activity during the two hours they ‘waste’ each day at work.

But it would seem that a high number of respondents do value the opportunities CRM offers. Almost two-thirds (64%) said they always enter correctly the amount of customer sales they make into their CRM. But 21% admitted they fail to always report face-to-face meetings with clients. More surprisingly, over a fifth of participants said they do not always record the number of products they had sold to clients.

The lack of honest accuracy is surprising considering the amount of time spent using CRM systems each day. A third said they spend between one and two hours a day on their system with a fifth spending three hours or more on their CRM. During their time using the management system, more than half (55%) said that call reporting was the most useful feature.

Although respondents were less impressed with the KAM abilities of their software with only 19% believing it to be the most useful facility. When questioned about what they would change given the chance, 45% said they wanted an improved database, over a quarter (28%) called for their system to be overall more useful, and 18% said they would prefer their CRM to be easier to use.

 

The next level

But what of the future of CRM systems? Will they be easier to use and have improved customer databases? David Round, General Manager, UK, Cegedim Relationship Management, says the regular interaction we now have with technology means we’ve all come to expect the latest developments.

“End users are significantly more ‘technology-savvy’ than their counterparts of even five years ago,” he explained. “If anything, the challenge for companies is to ensure that they provide their end users with the types of technology that they use as consumers. It’s also important to focus on the usability of your software to ensure maximum use. Technology companies – and pharma – must work together to develop a better understanding of the interaction, to ensure it meets users’ needs in the field.”

One main reason that users have become more ‘savvy’ is down to the use and interaction with social media. Whether at home or at work, websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and most recently Google+ have driven an increased use of various forms of technology – especially on devices such as smartphones or tablet devices which reps are calling for in the field.

Pharma companies, both in the US and UK, have flirted with the idea of fully embracing the power social media harnesses, but at present are restricted by the PMCPA’s Code of Practice and by the FDA – who has again delayed the publication of its guidance.

The FDA says it is “difficult to provide a timeframe... due to the extensive work and review process, or ‘Good Guidance Practices’, which ensures that FDA’s stakeholders are provided well vetted guidances articulating FDA’s current thinking on a topic”.

Although the FDA may be unsure on how to direct healthcare companies, David Round believes the introduction, both professionally and personally, of social media has had an impact on staff and their expectations.

“For the modern professional person, much of their everyday life is conducted online – for example on shopping, utilities, insurance or booking a holiday – and many users then want the same level of capability from the tools they use in their job,” he added.

Dan Goldsmith, General Manager, Veeva Europe, agrees there has been a significant shift in the way we operate and interact due to our experiences online through tagged posts or hash-tagged searches. But although the 800 million users on Facebook – more than half which ‘log-on’ every day – and 175 million people on Twitter have no problem saying hello to friends, pharma finds it more difficult reaching out to people.

“Social media create a new avenue for healthcare dialogue and will only continue to pervade our lives,” said Dan. “Consequently, I believe that pharma faces two challenges. The first is to decide how to participate in the online dialogue with stakeholders and then to create those interactions through the channels we’re all familiar with, such as Facebook and Twitter.

“The second is to figure out how to leverage the model of social dialogue internally to support stronger collaboration and more focused communication among employees. Already, we see some companies taking advantage of the latest social business tools to connect employees with one another and to access and share information in real time.”

Clearly CRM solution providers understand the potential modern technology and social media platforms offer to companies. Whether pharma and its workforce get fully up to speed on the intergalactic highway sooner or later remains to be seen.

Protests are being planned ahead of the Health and Social Care Bill’s passage through Parliament next week.

UNISON and the BMA are planning to show their opposition to the controversial reforms to coincide with report stage and third reading of the Bill on the 6th and 7th September.

Local events nationwide are planned to coincide with Bill entering the House of Commons with NHS staff and patients set to gather for a candlelit vigil outside Parliament. The BMA is also urging campaigners to take part in online action to email their MP signalling their opposition, and to use Twitter and Facebook to voice their concerns.

BMA Council Chairman, Dr Hamish Meldrum, has also written to all MPs saying the reforms still present an “unacceptably high risk to the NHS” warning them it threatens its ability to operate “effectively and equitably, now and in the future”.

Despite the amendments following recommendations from the NHS Future Forum, the Association still believes the Bill should be withdrawn or be subject to further substantial changes.

In his letter, Dr Meldrum continues to warn of the “inappropriate and misguided reliance on ‘market forces’ to shape services” with the Bill creating “a more central role for choice without a full consideration of the consequences” and the “potential to destabilise local health economies”.

There are several specific areas of concern the BMA has on the Bill including:

• The limit Foundation Trusts (FTs) can generate from private patients
• The proposed ‘Quality Premium’ for commissioners
• Forcing all NHS Trusts to become FTs
• That the Bill reflects an intention that any increase in patients’ choice of providers should not be given a higher priority than tackling health inequalities and promoting integrated care
• Ensuring there is a robust and transparent process which has the full confidence of the profession when it comes to how ‘failing’ FTs are dealt with
• The lack of satisfactory assurance that the Secretary of State will have ultimate responsibility for the provision of a comprehensive health service whilst also allowing other bodies, like the new NHS Board and Clinical Commissioning Groups, day-to-day operational independence.

In a response to the concerns over the responsibility of the Secretary of State, the DH says “the Secretary of State will continue to be responsible - as now - for promoting a comprehensive health service. The NHS will always be available to all, free at the point of use and based on need and not on the ability to pay. To say otherwise is absolute nonsense”.

A groundbreaking new iPhone app enables wheelchair users to access the Internet through their wheelchair controls.

iPortal Accessibility (pictured below) from Dynamic Control can be used by people with limited or no hand control to use the iPhone for a wide range of purposes – from making a phone call to planning a travel route or maintaining a Facebook page.

The new app builds on the existing iPortal system, a power chair accessory that uses an iPhone to display wheelchair information in real time for the user.

“We have combined the latest technology with our tried and tested wheelchair control units,” said Charlotte Walshe, CEO of Dynamic Controls. “iPortal provides wheelchair users with a wealth of information about their wheelchair and the world.”

Integrated or retrofitted with Dynamic Control’s DX and DX2 wheelchair control systems, iPortal Accessibility can open up new opportunities for many wheelchair users.

For example, the DSL105 contactless head controls enable the user to operate both their wheelchair and the iPortal by head movements, without needing to apply any physical force.

Jonty, a wheelchair user with a high-level spinal injury who uses iPortal Accessibility with a DSL105 head control, commented: “The iPortal is revolutionary for my life. I now have full control over one of the world’s leading technological devices and the ability to keep on expanding this device into so many other areas.”

The new app will be showcased at this year’s Rehacare congress in Düsseldorf, the world’s largest trade fair for assistive technologies.

Headquartered in New Zealand, Dynamic Controls is a leading supplier of electronic controls for powered wheelchairs. Its UK operation is based in Kidderminster.

Life science companies have lost the option of preventing public comments being made on their Facebook pages.

Recent changes in the social networking service’s policy will prevent medtech, biotech and pharma companies from using the site as a one-way publicity channel.

Exceptions include pages that refer to prescription drugs or devices or include prescription information. However, by nature such pages are rarely appropriate for a global audience.

Facebook’s recent message to member companies commented: “We understand that these changes may lead you to re-evaluate your strategy and presence on Facebook.”

Sam Barnes, Director and Head of PR at healthcare consultancy Axon, said: “The reaction of many industry leaders with current Facebook pages, particularly those with fewer followers, may be to remove their pages, rather than try to identify solutions that will cause legal/regulatory – and staffing – burdens for monitoring and responding to comments.”

Writing on the Eucomed website, Barnes noted that life science companies may take the option of installing their own ‘custom wall’ on Facebook that enables them to place comments on hold while they are moderated.