Last week not one, not two, but three websites were launched by Big Pharma to help educate people with diabetes. Actually, there were four Pharma companies at work here: NovoNordisk launched info warehouse Cornerstones4Care; Sanofi-Aventis started a new customer-facing blog, Discuss Diabetes; and Bristol Myer Squibb and AstraZeneca teamed up for something called The Type 2 Talk, an attempt at improving the conversation between T2 patients and their healthcare providers.
A lot of money, time, and resources goes into developing these sites, and in this age of Health 2.0 and awareness of us ePatients, a lot of stock goes into making these websites successful. Clearly, Big Pharma wants to become a “go to” resource for diabetes info — ostensibly to support and educate, but also ultimately to sell their product. The billion-dollar question, however, is: do these sites do their mission justice? i.e. Can companies that develop Pharma products really help us PWDs in the thankless day-to-day grind known as diabetes management?
To answer that question, at least from one educated PWD’s subjective viewpoint, we decided to have a look:
At face value, Type 2 Talk seems to have the most legit basis. It was created not just by Bristol Myer Squibb and AstraZeneca, but also in partnership with the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American College of Endocrinology — experts who ought to have a clue. The stated goal of this site is improving the conversation between doctors and patients (which we all know often needs quite a bit of work). The site’s three sections, “Blood Sugar Talk,” “Goal Talk.’” and “Motivation Talk,” are supposed to provide guidance, in the form of clearly laid-out advice for both patients and doctors. The info is presented side-by-side along with “example” dialogue. While it’s somewhat interesting as a patient to see “the other side” — the advice being given to doctors — I wonder if that perhaps does a disservice, because attention is being spread too thin. Do these companies really believe they are going to get doctors and patients to flock to the same Pharma-driven online destination just because they posted some mock conversations? Frankly, I doubt it.
Another section of the site looks more useful: Type 2 Talk Worksheets, which actually walk doctors and patients through creating their own “mock conversations” for various scenarios. Users are prompted to list challenges, like roadblocks to taking medications, or to lay out an ideal agenda for the next office visit. The Medication Log worksheet is a place for patients not just to tally doses, but to write down what roadblocks they might face, like “physical side effects,” “concerns,” or even “feelings” (OMG). A Realistic Goals worksheet helps patients write out their objectives with incremental phases of progress. With New Year’s Resolutions just behind us, it might be worth checking this section out (I may even print out a copy of my own).
NovoNordisk’s website, Cornerstones4Care, touts itself as being “customizable.” So what can you can customize? Well, it wasn’t obvious at first, but you can actually create a personal account here. Once I was logged in, I started searching for that special customizable content, but what I found instead was the typical information on managing diabetes that you would find on any other health website. Only a few features seemed somewhat interactive, including the MediReminder (which unfortunately wouldn’t even allow me to customize time of day for the reminders), and the Blood Sugar Log (which didn’t allow me to go past double digits when setting my blood sugar goals – Gads!).
Needless to say, I have trouble figuring out what is so “customizable” that I would care to frequent Novo’s website. There are much better ways of keeping track of your blood sugar and medication, such as DiabetesMine Design Challenge winner Log4Life, SugarStats, and GlucoseBuddy. Browsing around, I occasionally spotted something that looked useful on this site, like the Activity Plan worksheet, but it was so buried amid a text-heavy website that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking really, really hard.
Other than that, Cornerstones4Care offered basic information on diabetes medication, checking your blood sugar, staying active… Even their “Beyond the Basics” section didn’t really go beyond anything, since it only covers how to treat high and low blood sugars, traveling with diabetes and handling sick days — all stuff most of us PWDs would consider basics! The text is made up of simplistic, bullet-point information and there is barely a patient example amongst all the dry information. Come on, Novo! This isn’t the mid-’90s. Just having a website doesn’t make you hip.
This brings us to Sanofi-Aventis’s new blog, called Discuss Diabetes, which “officially” hit the Internet this week. Since it is brand new, there is so far only one post, an introduction by Community Manager Laura Kolodjeski, who talks about how they want to “engage in two-way dialogue.”
Like the other sites, Sanofi-Aventis plans to share information on living with diabetes, but they also plan to feature guest bloggers and have even enabled blog comments, albeit heavily moderated; don’t be surprised if your comment is delayed or even disappears, though Sanofi-Aventis says they promise they are reading every single one.
We have a mixed opinion on this site, since there have been so many barriers to Pharma engaging in the blogosphere. On the one hand, it’s exciting to see companies breaking down those regulatory barriers that kept them from entering the conversation in the past. It’s also nice validation of what we all do here in the Diabetes Online Community to hear Pharma say directly: “There is a lot for us to learn from you.”
On the other hand, we can’t help being a little wary of a huge Pharma org like Sanofi-Aventis attempting to engage the Diabetes OC by assigning a “Community Manager” to ostensibly become one of us. They want guest posts to make their site engaging — so we’re all supposed to write for them for free? It’s not that I want them to pay us to contribute, either. It’s just that they ought to be bringing valuable content to us, and not the other way around, no? And not just product marketing stuff, either!
It seems to me that has the right mindframe, but it’s always a tricky situation when a Pharma company dips into social media.
At the end of the day, the real question is given how busy all of our lives are, which kind of website would you be willing to spend your time on? An old-school static, one-way information-heavy website, like Cornerstones4Care? Or a lively, diverse and community-based website, like TuDiabetes, DiabeticConnect or DiabetesMine? A Pharma-run blog like that from Sanofi-Aventis is kind of a new animal, but I do wonder, will patients find anything valuable there besides the same basic info readily available at places like WebMD? And will the community be willing to feed content into a Pharma blog to make it more lively?!
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 66% of adults who search for health information online say they are looking for “someone like me.”
In the 21st century, where Social drives everything, is it really worth Pharma’s money to create static micro-sites that provide regurgitated information on how to care for diabetes? Wouldn’t it be better to provide recommendations to thorough and thoughtful patient-led websites? I can only imagine how much money was funneled into creating these sites — and especially for a company like Novo Nordisk, which already has some very big D-campaigns going, we think the money dumped into these new sites could be put to better use.
Thanks for the well-considered analysis of these sites. The other item that is puzzling is how some of these efforts work with (or against) other marketing efforts by the same companies. For example, Novo Nordisk funds (at least partially), a successful community with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) called juvenation.org, so it’s curious how the new effort works with this effort, other than JDRF controls it, and it could go to another drug company when the agreement ends. Still, pharma in general is struggling with the whole social media thing anyway, but it seems clear that they will have to realize that it’s a two-way communication channel, and until that happens, most efforts will not succeed. You have hit the nail on the head when you say it might be better to provide recommendations to thorough and thoughtful patient-led websites.
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It will be interesting to see how pharma blogs play out given their responsibility to address any statements of adverse effects. It’s also my understanding that under current FDA regulations they cannot have any open text fields or comment boxes on any pages that include advertising (mostly for these reasons).
These regulations also deter pharma from advertising on and supporting patient owned/written blogs because of the need to have separate pages for commenting. (Or blogs have to disable commenting, which in my opinion no longer qualifies it as a blog.)
If sites, like that of Sanofi-Aventis, want patient created content, then they would do well to take on paid patient (or caretaker) contributors who write well. Otherwise, they will get what they pay for.
I love that you examined these things. I’m amazed period at how much social media is driving our lives. Fascinated how pharma companies are trying to get involved. Obviously, they’re smart to work their way in to online diabetes conversations, but sounds like they still have to do a lot of work to succeed. I’m sure someone will get it down, though…
From DiscussDiabetes:
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-of all the online forums for diabetes, why would I go to this one to discuss anything?
“They want guest posts to make their site engaging — so we’re all supposed to write for them for free? It’s not that I want them to pay us to contribute, either. It’s just that they ought to be bringing valuable content to us, and not the other way around, no?”
I feel like this is occurring more and more often in social media forums these days.
I feel you left out some important perspective! Social media is meant to be a venue for sharing information, whether it be free or paid.
Currently, patient sites are all but hands off for pharma (other than to advertise) due to regulatory and legal issues! Last year, I was participating on a patient panel about how pharma could be better involved and woman told her story of having reached out to patients through a patient portal and had her hand seriously slapped by FDA! Her company is now afraid. By creating their own patient centric sites they can control this problem.
It will take some time for Pharma to change the current rules for patient relationships and patients have to be better stewards for showing, all the powers that make up the rules, why change is in our best interest!
(Scott) As for NovoNordisk and Juvenation, that was a grant and the site is run by JDRF. Novo has no input as to how it is run, nor the content. It basically was a big check to get the ball rolling and Novo receives recognition. It’s separate from cornerstone.
And last, your statement that pharma should engage with patients sites only! That’s not visionary, that’s just self serving! Think of it this way, we have about 20 years in which to face the huge wave of patients, not enough doctors, or CDEs! It’s already scary! Try sitting on the Q&A area of places like Healthcentral. There are a lot of lost d people, how do we propose to help them?
If these efforts by pharma are a first generation to try to breakout of the current pharma/pt mold, they have my support!
@Ann B – I disagree. I think Allison said it well here.
First off, Pharma is famously self-serving, for obvious reasons. You may not know that I also write for HealthCentral, and do a lot of Q&A at DiabeticConnect.com. It is sites like that where patients get the most value! Not some marketing sites disguised as patient resources — because to date, most of the latter are not very useful.
like everything else, only time will tell.
These sites also need to “feel” right in order for people to hang around, and they already have a pretty big stigma to overcome by being “big pharma.”
But who knows – maybe some good will come from this movement. I’m willing to watch and see.