This episode of the Digital Health Revolution features Fabio Gratton, President of Ignite Health’s (www.ignitehealth.com) eastern division. Gratton talks about how the pharmaceutical industry has been influenced by social media and whether it is ready to engage Internet empowered consumers on their own terms. Gratton also discusses “Live With It,” a groundbreaking animated HIV education video series that has garnered significant attention and praise.

The Digital Health Revolution is a biweekly WebTV show featuring the people who are using and making the digital technologies that are reshaping health around the world. Join host Fard Johnmar every two weeks to explore the people and technologies reshaping healthcare.

ScribeMedia is a convergent media company that helps organizations in health care, media, technology, and cleantech develop and execute new media strategies. ScribeMedia develops Web-based software applications such as social media platforms, live video webcasting tools, e-learning applications, and contest web sites. ScribeMedia produces media such as concerts, conferences, documentaries, TV and WebTV shows. ScribeMedia helps customers reach their target audience in new and engaging ways.

To view all episodes, please visit the Digital Health Revolution home page.

Panelists discuss how established health sites try to stand out from the pack? How have old-line publishers moved beyond shovelware? What are portals doing to grab users’ attention? What are they doing to adapt to changing times and increased competition? Health portals vs. portals with health vs. old-line publishers vs. niches vs. service providers and more? How do they get the attention of advertisers and marketers?

Panelists
Stephanie Dolgins, VP-Women’s & Lifestyle, AOL
Marjorie Martin, SVP, General Manager, About.com Health
David Kang, SVP and Editorial Director, Rodale Interactive Services
David Kramer, CEO, Digitas Health

Moderator
Chris Schroeder, CEO and president, The HealthCentral Network

Broadband video, search engines, merging medical info with personal medical data, ad networks, and social media; efforts to mesh health and Web 2.0 abound. What’s working? What’s not? What’s next?

Panelists
Raj Amin, CEO and co-founder, HealthiNation
Steven H. Krein, CEO and co-founder, OrganizedWisdom
Daniel Palestrant, CEO, Sermo
Dean Stephens, president & COO, Healthline.

Moderator
Michael Mason, Health Editor, NYTimes.com

The health-and-wellness media space is one of the hottest around when it comes to M&A and venture capital investments. What are buyers and investors looking for? How long can that continue?

Panelists
Esther Dyson, EDventure
John Lambros, Managing Director, Savvian
Morris R. Levitt, Managing Director-Life Sciences, DeSilva+Phillips
Benjamin Wolin, CEO, Waterfront Media/EverydayHealth.

Moderator
Rafat Ali, publisher and co-editor, ContentNext Media/paidContent.org

Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a co-founder of America Online, discusses changes in online health.

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Speakers Include:

• Raj Amin, CEO & Co-Founder, HealthiNation
• Stephanie Dolgins, VP-Women’s & Lifestyle, AOL
• Esther Dyson, EDventure
• David Kramer, CEO, Digitas Health
• John Lambros, Managing Director, Savvian
• Morris R. Levitt, Managing Director-Life Science, DeSilva+Phillips
• Marjorie Martin, GM-Health, About.com
• Daniel Palestrant, CEO, Sermo
• Chris Schroeder, CEO and president, The HealthCentral Network
• Dean Stephens, president and COO, Healthline
• Benjamin Wolin, CEO, Waterfront Media/EverydayHealth

A conversation with Mark Bard, president of New York City–based Manhattan Research, focusing on trends in patient and doctor use of the Internet and emerging health media business models.

Where do consumers go for their online health info? does it shift depending on whether they’re seeking information for lifestyles versus something acute?

Consumers rely on a combination of general search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, to start the process and major health portals, such as WebMD, EverydayHealth, and About.com to drill into the details and deep content. Use of specific health portals is often dependent on the type of information required and if the consumer has an existing relationship, or loyalty, to a specific health site. If they have a relationship they may start with that site as their entry point and then use search to round out the information they use to make decisions.

Of note is that most of the larger health portals have gotten much better at search optimization so a consumer starting with search to begin the process may actually be one page and one click away from a health portal they have been using for health information for years.

Similar to general health and wellness information access, consumers also rely on a combination of search and portals during a health information access session focused on acute or specific disease content. In other words, it’s not such much about “one or the other” as much as it is relative reliance on portals versus search. For example, if a favorite health portal is light on content for a very obscure disease then the consumer is likely to return to Google or Yahoo! to search out complementary resources online - such as highly targeted disease sites, message boards with relevant keywords, or blogs.

How does the European online health scene differ from the U.S.? Are there models there we aren’t seeing in the U.S. yet?

As an overall statement, the U.S. health market is significantly more advanced because the U.S. has morphed from the days of sites with 5 million consumers and a few key sponsors to several sites with over 25 million visitors. When you get those numbers combined with a growing roster of large global health and pharmaceutical sponsors, you have sites that continue to invest in content, tools, services, and interactive community applications for their growing user base. The benefit to the consumers visiting these sites is that as they grow in numbers the individual users experiences significant gains in value with respect to the content and services they use on the site.

Until European and international markets get significantly more support from the government, or commercial sponsors, many of these markets will remain great sites for detailed content but may be lacking in many of the next generation tools and features that U.S. adults have come to expect online.

That said, the realm of “health connectivity” is one area where markets in Europe have the potential to surpass the U.S. market and remain leaders for years to come. By that I mean using technology to connect patients with physicians. Given most markets in Europe have medical systems based on the government as the unifying stakeholder, as opposed to private insurance in the U.S, there is an opportunity to move applications through the system very quickly with mandated standards of data access and interoperability (at least at the country level).

The internet makes it easier for providers, insurers, pharmas to go directly to consumers. How much a threat is that to traditional advertising dollars for health media?

Is online a threat to historical traditional media spend? Yes. But as we have learned, the “shift to e” has taken longer than most of us focused on technology ever expected. We still live in a world where companies are allocating 10%, or maybe 15%, of their marketing budgets to interactive channels and to move the needle to 20% they are demanding metrics above and beyond anything they have in the offline media world.

One thing is certain, as consumers and physicians spend more time online and get more of their health information and health news online the budgets will follow - it just takes time for thinking at the brand and corporate level to catch up to the market.

Do you have any sense of whether consumers in general are ready for portable health information stored online at sites like Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, Revolution?

Ready is a relative term. If you lay out a broad definition of “managing personal health information through the use of secure technology” you will get a large number of consumers that think it’s a “good idea” in principle. However, when we analyze the market we like to drill into the audience that is using personal health records (PHR) today – or ready to use them in the near future. It’s the difference between an interesting concept and moving markets.

The latest data we have is that approximately five million U.S. adults are using these PHR applications. While that seems like a large number in isolation, it represents a very small percentage of the overall population - and even the online population.

The key to adoption is to show consumers how they can populate these tools without constant double data entry, manage their information in a way that is intuitive, and at the end of the day they really want to share that information with a personal physician that will actually use that information as part of the treatment and care plan.

Steve case believes 8 things will happen in health care in the next decade:

1. consumers will take control
2. centralized approaches will break down - distributed systems and open networks will take over
3. less regulation in health care in the long term
4. a torrent of innovation in the health space over the next decade - dealing with people while they are healthy (wellness and prevention) and when they are sick and moving into the world of chronic disease.
5. innovation and disruption also leads to chaos & misfires. some bad stuff will happen, but on balance good.
6. emphasis on being healthy, staying healthy
7. personalization - the one size fits all approach will break down. people will engage more and care more about their health if they have personalized tools to manage their health.
8. the killer application is community. people are social beings. instant messenger, social media, etc. if community is important to kids listening to music and watching movies, imagine how important it will be to people who have health issues.

This video is from Consumer Health World.

Register now for future Consumer Health World conferences.

Last year, DHR traveled to the epicenter of the Health 2.0 movement (San Francisco) to conduct interviews with some of the people who are using social media technologies to
impact health. While there, we couldn’t pass up the chance to speak with Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya, co-founders of the Health 2.0 conference. Holt and Subaiya field some tough questions about the definition of Health 2.0 and whether it is just another tech buzzword.

The Digital Health Revolution is a biweekly WebTV show featuring the people who are using and making the digital technologies that are reshaping health around the world. Join host Fard Johnmar every two weeks to explore the people and technologies reshaping healthcare.

ScribeMedia is a convergent media company that helps organizations in health care, media, technology, and cleantech develop and execute new media strategies. ScribeMedia develops Web-based software applications such as social media platforms, live video webcasting tools, e-learning applications, and contest web sites. ScribeMedia produces media such as concerts, conferences, documentaries, TV and WebTV shows. ScribeMedia helps customers reach their target audience in new and engaging ways.

To view all episodes, please visit the Digital Health Revolution home page.

Transcript

Greetings and welcome. I’m Michael Cervieri and this is the Healthdot Pharma Report. Today’s report is brought to you by KnowledgeSource, a leading provider of Health Care business information and analysis services for executives.

Today’s report follows a pharmaceutical bender: We look at bong-like delivery systems, the tangled road of medicine and booze, hallucinogenic drug reactions and a Vatican dispute over sexy time.

WE DIDN’T INHALE

Diabetes is on the rise in the United States and pharmaceutical companies are looking for fancy new ways to package and sell their drugs.

The drug is generally insulin. And generally it’s injected. But insulin is generic so the money is in coming up with clever ways to administer insulin and monitor blood sugar levels.

For example, the Omnipod pumps insulin from a device that looks like a smartphone; Mediacom has an tester that looks like a pen: Medtronic has a pump that looks like a pager, and the Glucophone analyzes a pinpricked blood sample and sends the data to your doctor.

Enter Pfizer. They’ve got a new product too. It’s called Exubera. And you don’t give yourself a shot. Instead. You inhale.

When created, Pfizer predicted the device would be so popular that they expected $2 billion in by 2010.

Unfortunately for them, they seem to have overlooked a few key points: Only ten percent of inhaled insulin actually makes it into the bloodstream so you need larger quantities and a bigger delivery device.

This lead to a design snafu. Consumers complained that the device was cumbersome and embarassing to use in public. Why? Because it looks like a bong.

Final result: The Exubera didn’t sell. As industry analyst Mike Krensavage of Raymond James & Associates noted, “This is one of the most stunning failures in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.”

Pfizer stands to lose $2.8 billion.

SLEEPING TROUBLE

Sleeping pills are a $4.5 billion business, but do they really make you sleep more?

According to a study published the National Institute of Health, sleeping pills get you to sleep 7-16 minutes faster than a placebo, and help you sleep 11 - 19 minutes longer.

For those caught in an insomnia haze, every minute counts, but with such small results, why are sleeping pills so popular?

The NIH study shows that the pills actually reduce anxiety, so that people don’t worry about trying to get to sleep. They also create a condition called anterograde amnesia, so that if you do toss and turn, you won’t really remember it. Clever stuff.

But while a little amnesia in the service of extra shut-eye might be fine, Rosemary Eckley awoke one morning with a broken wrist. She fell while sleepwalking after taking ambien and didn’t remember a thing.

Some might remember that twenty years ago authorities had to withdraw the drug Halcion: It seems that airline passengers trying to sleep through a flight would wake up at their destination with no clue how they got there, or even where they were.

With this in mind, Cehpalon’s sleep disorder drug Provigil will start carrying warnings that in rare cases it might cause rashes, anxiety, mania, hallucinations, and suicidal thoughts.

And in some very rare cases, the popular sleeping drug Trazodone has been linked to Priapism - which means prolonged and painful erections which will not go away. Try sleeping through that.

BAD MEDICINE

BUST IN ST. LOUIS

Back in 2000, the FDA discovered that the General Theraputics Corporation in St. Louis was manufacturing unsanitary medicines, and ordered them to cease and desist.

Fast forward to September of this year, inspectors got a tip that General Theraputics is still at it. The FDA raided the facility, broke through a false wall and found several secret rooms full of all kinds of nasties, including roof leaks, water damage, dead cockroaches and mouse droppings near equipment, containers of Vitrin infested with beetles, and deteriorating chemicals that were potentially explosive.

The building was evacuated, the drugs seized, and legal proceedings are… proceeding.

WHISTLE-BLOWER

Meanwhile, in Seattle, James Marchese was fired from his job at Cell Theraputics.

Marchese and wasn’t happy about it, so he told the Justice Department that his former employer had illegally marketed a cancer drug called Trisenox and bilked millions from Medicare.

The company agreed to settle the charges by paying the government $10.5 million, of which Mr. Marchese was entitled, as a reward for his whistleblowing, to receive a quarter - that’s $2.8 million.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank: Marchese’s ex-girlfriend testified that Marchese masterminded the Medicare fraud in the first place, and destroyed documents that implicated him. It seems he also wrote a manuscript that documents his adventures at Cell Theraputics, but Marchese calls it “a crude attempt at fiction”, and said he was shocked that a federal judge might withhold his whistle-blower reward.

“If not for me,” he said, “they wouldn’t even have a case.”

TAMIFLU KILLS CHILDREN

Governments around the world are stockpiling Tamiflu in case of a lethal worldwide outbreak of the flu. But the FDA’s Pediatric Advisory Committee is meeting to discuss some disturbing side effects in children- hallucinations, self-injury, and suicides: at least a dozen Japanese children have died since 2005. Drugmaker Roche insists that the side effects are caused by the flu, not their meds.

TRASYLDOL BLOODBATH

Even more harrowing is the case of Joseph Randone.

He was given Trasyldol to minimize complications from his heart surgery. Instead, the drug caused his kidneys to fail, and set off a chain reaction that forced him to have both legs amputated, a tracheotomy, and to be put on a ventilator to breathe.

Then food in his body backed up to the point where his corneas exploded, and they had to sew his eyes shut.

He died shortly thereafter.

His family has filed an $80-million dollar lawsuit against the manufacturer, Bayer, which says that patient safety is it’s foremost concern. The FDA, bold as ever, ruled that the drug will stay on the market, with added warnings labels.

PHARMACISTS TELL POPE TO MIND HIS OWN BUSINESS

Pope Benedict caused a ruckus recently when he urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs such as the “morning-after pill”, which can stop ovulation if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse.

Franco Caprino, head of Federfarma, said that by law Italian pharmacists have to distribute medicine prescribed by a doctor. Health Minister Livia Turco said that while the Pope has the right to urge young people to be sexually responsible, he can not tell pharmacists what to do.

MEDICINAL ALCOHOL

Pharma Report followers know that we hear have a soft spot for adult beverage, and are particularly interested in Japanese Brewer Kirin Holdings bid to acquire drug maker Kyowa Hakko.

Kirin is Japan’s largest brewmaker and is seeking a 50.1% holding in the company.

Here at the Pharma Report, we bring back the ever-intoxicating PharmaGirl to ponder the millennial relationship between alcohol and medicine.

Since the times of Dionysus, wine was believed to believed to
stimulate appetite, aid digestion, increase energy, and was prescribed
for practically every complaint.

For example, 19th century English scientists provided evidence that wine could be a miracle cure, and debates raged about how to match different vineyards and vintages to different medical conditions.

Medical societies debated the virtues of reds and whites and even champagnes. Doctors weren’t just doctors, but wine experts too. Their prescriptions to patients included up to six glasses of wine with meals, or three glasses of champagne five times a day.

By the early 20th century, wine as a remedy faded from practice as pharmaceuticals took hold and societies worried about alcoholism.

But even today, we have proponents of what’s called the “French Paradox”, that the French have low levels of coronary artery disease despite high fat diets because of the red wine they consume.

Wine, Louis Pasteur once said, is the most healthful and the most hygienic of all beverages.

We here at the Pharma Report most respectfully agree.

VIAGRA CAUSES LOVE

A Pharma Report wouldn’t be a Pharma Report without passing mention of our old favorite, Viagra. In a Happy HannuKwanzamus type of way, It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Turns out the little blue pill doesn’t just cause erections: It also raises levels of the hormone Oxytocin - at least in lab rats at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Oxytocin is involved in orgasm and sexual desire, but also in nursing and breastfeeding, which suggests that Viagra could promote feelings of, well, love and bonding.

Sounds perfect for the holiday seasons. Which is why we left little blue pills for Santa instead of cookies and milk.

BREASTS TURN WOMEN ON

Speaking of love and bonding, women who are exposed to the smell of breastfeeding experience a 20 percent increase in sexual desire and fantasies, according to a study at the The Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia.

Researches suggest this probably evolved because the presence of nursing mothers signals that conditions are favorable for breeding, but to us here at the Pharma Report, it signals the imminant arrival of new mammaradesiacs.

That’s it for the HealthDot Pharma Report, I’m Michael Cervieri. Stay well, stay informed, be healthy.

About this Video

Reporting AIDS is a recurring series that focuses on the people, policies and issues facing the global community. Shows appear twice a month with in-depth interviews conducted by host John Mikytuck.

Past episodes can be viewed here.

Documentary filmmaker Jay Corcoran captures the impact of AIDS on peoples lives. Corcoran’s three films; Life and Death on the A-List, Undetectable, and most recently, Rock Bottom, track the evolution of the AIDS epidemic since 1993. Corcoran’s films expose the struggles of people living with the disease and shine light on the underlying problems that continue to spread it. John Mikytuck talks with Jay Corcoran about AIDS on film.