This slide show on Top 10 Pharma Efforts In Social Media has been get­ting trac­tion on Slideshare.net (2,400 views and 20 peo­ple have “favor­ited” it), so thought I’d share it here as well.

I’ve been doing social media con­sult­ing for a com­pany in the health care/pharmaceutical space, and so I’ve been try­ing to immerse myself more deeply in how social media can be of value — to patients, doc­tors and com­pa­nies — in the health care space.

This is now par­tic­u­larly timely, given the Food and Drug Administration’s pub­lic hear­ing on the “Pro­mo­tion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Med­ical Prod­ucts Using the Inter­net and Social Media Tools” on Nov. 12–13. Among the issues to be addressed: adverse event report­ing; ful­fill­ing reg­u­la­tions; account­abil­ity; post­ing cor­rec­tions, links, and opt-in choices. You can vote your con­science at this online sur­vey.

It’s a much-needed clear­ing of the air, given that reg­u­la­tory uncer­tainty has held back the indus­try from inter­act­ing with the pub­lic to a con­sid­er­able degree. Pharma blog­ger John Mack is help­ing lead the charge in get­ting the pub­lic to respond to the FDA’s ques­tions regard­ing its reg­u­la­tion of social media. I’m with those who say, yes, social media does fun­da­men­tally change the land­scape and require a rethink­ing of decades-old prac­tices. (I think the FDA should take a page from the FTC in plac­ing empha­sis on dis­clo­sure of pay­ments com­ing from the industry.)

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