Top 10 health care social media predictions for 2010

Social media has been the dancing elephant in the living room of medical marketing ever since user-generated content on the Web became possible, and the furniture hasn’t stopped shaking since. But 2009 was a watershed year in terms of adoption and next steps, as pharmaceutical companies from AstraZeneca to Sanofi-Aventis explored channels from YouTube to Twitter, while in November FDA took the unprecedented step of holding a public hearing regarding use of the Internet and social media for the promotion of FDA-regulated products. The once far-fetched notion of FDA-issued Internet guidelines now looms as inevitable as it once seemed surprising.


Experts are making predictions about the exciting year ahead, unabashedly speculating if 2010 will indeed be the year the healthcare social media groundswell turns into a transformative medical marketing eruption - and whether that disruption proves to have an overall positive or negative impact on the industry. Ver...

• Prediction #1: FDA will issue draft guidelines that outline how manufacturers can and should use the Internet and Social Media for FDA-regulated products by the end of 2010, infusing the channel with direction, legitimacy, and explosive activity.

• Prediction #2: Google’s new “pharma-friendly” ad format, now in testing with select customers including Bayer, will propel these guidelines, revolutionize paid search, and help reinstate the “one-click rule” for fair balance information.

• Prediction #3: The role of video will exponentially increase and be taken even more seriously by healthcare companies and the FDA.

• Prediction #4: The role of patients and patient communities will increase and prove central to both branded and unbranded social media DTC initiatives.

• Prediction #5: The role of healthcare communications agencies will increase, meaning a bigger role for social media marketers and consultants.

• Prediction #6: A daring pharmaceutical company and healthcare marketing manager will score a “big win” with social media, opening the floodgates.

• Prediction #7: Not only pharma, but government and health authorities will increasingly utilize social media as their preferred communication strategy.

• Prediction #8: Social media will prove to be a vital internal communications tool.

• Prediction #9: Social media will help nurture the physician-patient relationship.

• Prediction #10: Social media will actually begin to benefit pharmaceutical companies’ own processes, tools, and technologies.