Sombras de sospecha...: iPad’s Spying / espionaje con iPad

Drug Reps Fear iPad’s Spying; They Should Be Worried About Their Jobs
By Jim Edwards | May 19, 2011

As more drug companies supply their employees with iPads, sales reps are increasingly paranoid about their employers’ ability to spy on them. In fact, though, they should really be worried about whether companies will even need humans to promote pharmaceuticals in the future.

The iPad is driving three trends in pharmaceutical marketing right now:

• A number of companies are buying iPads in bulk for their salesforces even if they don’t have presentation software to run on them.

• More doctors are carrying iPads. Some of them receive them aspart of their medical education at teaching hospitals. They are a natural fit because they let physicians access electronically stored medical records without having to leave the bedside. About 75 percent of doctors own some kind of Apple product, according to one piece of research.

• Sales reps are waking up to the iPad’s tracking abilities. In addition to its ability to constantly record its location, reps are finding that company software also records their activity while the device is switched on.

Pfizer (PFE) believes it will save $500,000 a year by giving new sales reps iPads instead of “several large boxes of textbooks and manuals.” Printed training materials for new reps can cost up to $1,000 per rep , but an iPad can be reused for each new incoming class of employees.

Other companies rolling out iPads to their reps include Stryker(SYK), Medtronic (MDT), Eisai, Novartis (NVS), AstraZeneca(AZN), Sunovion, ProStrakan and Millenium.

Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez believes iPads will prevent reps from making illegal “off-label” pitches for drugs. In a March email to employees he wrote:

"Another benefit of having sales materials on the iPad is that our reps will be more compliant — unlike with paper versions, you can’t alter the electronic materials."

The resistance starts here

Novartis reps are already plotting their resistance to the devices on Cafe Pharma, the drug industry’s anonymous gossip website. There’s a thread on “beating the iPad” here and one on preventing the iPad from tracking you here.(Más)

Ver también:

El Ipad y la Visita médica...

NOVARTIS... con Ipad trabajan menos visitan/producen más...

El Ipad y la Visita médica...

Joe Jimenez la "impuso" a los suyos en Novartis...

NOVARTIS... con Ipad trabajan menos visitan/producen más...

Nancy Lurke fué parte importante en el empeño...


"Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic Inc. and Boston Scientific Corp. are among the drug and medical-device firms making the move, while others say they are testing out the devices."

Un laboratorio pionero en España en este sentido en Menarini. Su directora de Comunicación, Montserrat Carrasco, explica que en 2010 "ya hicimos dos cursos de formación muy prácticos para formar a médicos en estas herramientas. Hemos comprobado que son pocos los facultativos que tienen un manejo avanzado de las nuevas tecnologías, y creemos que es algo fundamental". Carrasco señala que entre las múltiples utilidades que puede tener esta formación para el médico, está la de "en un futuro aprovechar para optimizar la visita médica".

Muchos más lo están haciendo...

"Otras voces relacionadas con el marketing y la comunicación de la industria participantes en el tweetup mencionado dejan ver por dónde van a ir los tiros en el futuro, al menos en la estrategia de los laboratorios. “El contacto humano es importante, pero los Social Media ahorran mucho tiempo”, coinciden. El ‘pero’ está en que no todos los médicos manejan las nuevas posibilidades de comunicación, y “hay una franja de entre 40 y 60 años que no conocen el 2.0”. Por eso los laboratorios creen que es “las empresas que empiecen primero a implementar las tecnologías de la información y de la comunicación irán por delante, porque podrán hacer ‘personal training’ con los médicos”, advierte una ejecutiva comercial."

La visita médica se reinventa con las nuevas tecnologías

Pharma has proved eager to take its tablets, using the iPad similar devices to sharpen sales and marketing efforts. (For more on pharma’s use of the iPad, see ‘Will the iPad kickstart a pharma sales and marketing revolution?’.)

Now, the industry will have even more tablets, with more functionality, from which to choose.

In March, Apple released its much-hyped iPad 2 and Motorola unveiled its Motorola Xoom. Research in Motion has promised a Blackberry tablet in 2011, and Google and Microsoft are rumored to have devices on the way as well.

Gartner forecasts that worldwide sales will total 54.8 million units in 2011, up 181 percent from 2010, and will surpass 208 million units in 2014.

Many of these devices will be destined for the business sector.

Future pharma: Making the most of the tablet takeover

Los "visitadores médicos" se sienten "desplazados...

La discusión planteada por Fernando Bueno Cerón en Linkedin

Como os imagináis la visita médica 2.0

Alguna vez lo habéis pensado? lo habéis imaginado? sentado desde vuestro ordenador chateando con los médicos? veis esto posible? ya se está haciendo? es un complemento a la visita tradicional? será esta reemplazada? debe reinventarse? es un horror? es un acierto? hacia allá es donde se va a ir? nunca se llegará? miles de preguntas.. tenemos respuestas?

pasa ya de 150 comentarios...

El debate sigue abierto en las redes sociales...

La visita médica sí tiene futuro, si evoluciona (del blog de Oscar Miranda...)

Ver

IPads Are Latest Weapon in Medical Sales

Will the iPad Do Away With the Pharma Rep?

Drug Makers Replace Reps With Digital Tools.

By JEANNE WHALEN

Big pharmaceutical companies have found replacements for the army of sales representatives they've laid off in recent years: digital sales tools that seek to sell doctors on drugs without the intrusion of an office visit.

Tens of thousands of pharmaceutical sales reps have been eliminated in the U.S., creating a void that drug makers are now increasingly filling with websites, iPad apps and other digital tools to interact with doctors who prescribe their treatments.

Doctors can use the tools to ask questions about drugs, order free samples and find out which insurers cover certain treatments. Sometimes drug-company representatives will engage them in live chat, or phone them back if they have more questions.

The changes are designed to cut costs and to reach doctors in ways other than the traditional office visit, which many busy physicians say they find intrusive and annoying. In 2009, one of every five doctors in the U.S. was what the industry calls a "no see," meaning the doctor wouldn't meet with reps.

Just a year later, that jumped to one in four, according to Bruce Grant, senior vice president of Digitas, a digital marketing agency of Publicis Groupe SA that has created tools for companies including AstraZeneca PLC and Sanofi-Aventis SA. About three-quarters of industry visits to U.S. doctors' offices fail to result in a face-to-face meeting, he adds.

Most companies say they're using digital tools to supplement personal sales calls, but widespread layoffs in the sector suggest that technology is replacing, not just supplementing, human reps.

.../...

Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk AS says it hasn't cut its U.S. sales force over the past five years but is still adding digital marketing tools. Late last year the company launched a website and iPad/iPhone application called Coags Uncomplicated, which offers tools to help doctors diagnose bleeding disorders. The site and app include a plug for Novo Nordisk's drug NovoSeven, which helps stop bleeding related to acquired hemophelia.

Citing data from market-research firms, Eddie Williams, head of Novo Nordisk's biopharmaceutical business in the U.S., said 72% of U.S. doctors own a smartphone, and 95% of them use it to download medical applications. Novo Nordisk has several other applications available on iTunes, including one that helps doctors calculate blood-sugar levels. Novo Nordisk is a major seller of insulin and other diabetes treatments.

Other companies offering iPhone and iPad apps for doctors include Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, Pfizer.inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Novartis AG.

Eli Lilly & Co. set up lillyconnect.com in 2002 as a new channel for marketing its drugs to doctors. But the company has since shut the site down, according to a Lilly spokesman, who says the site "outlived its goals." He says Lilly is now considering "newer on-demand portals" that will allow doctors to "access information instantly as they are treating patients."

Más

Ver tambien:

Muerte de la Visita médica...?

The Changing Role of Pharma Sales Reps/John Mack entrevista a Nancy Lurker

Novartis, The iPad & 35,000 More Visits To Docs

NOVARTIS... con Ipad trabajan menos visitan/producen más...

In a note to employees this morning, Novartis ceo Joe Jimenez gushed that the Apple iPad offers the drugmaker “game-changing” technology that will make it possible for sales reps to save 250 hours over the course of the year and allow “the entire field force to make an incredible 35,000 additional customer visits each year.”

This conclusion, of course, has not yet been proven. But Novartis did trim 1,400 sales reps from its roster in recent weeks, underscoring how technology will increasingly be used by the pharmaceutical industry to eliminate such personnel whenever possible (back story). A few more iPads and perhaps a few more hundred reps will go?

But there is more. Jimenez also notes that “another benefit of having sales materials on the iPad is that our reps will be more compliant - unlike with paper versions, you can’t alter the electronic materials.” What does that say about how reps are viewed? In any event, the drugmaker recently began using the iPad in a pilot program in its vaccines division. (Más)

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