Feb 1, 2010

1 to 5…What’s Your Pharma Product’s Consumer Score? – Askapatient

Pharma marketers close your eyes and imagine a website that allows patients to rate your product on a scale of 1 to 5…a site that permits patients to share their side effects and stories. It’s a site where consumers are taking more control and are making decisions about their healthcare in the absence of their doctor. Mystified? Intrigued? Horrified?

Now open your eyes.

Hover over the date in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. The year is 2010 and shame on most of us if we didn’t know something like this already exists. The site is Askapatient.com.

Now, before you pop a Valium or reach for the Ativan to ease your sudden onset anxiety, look at the consumer ratings for these products (Ativan 3.6, Xanax 3.9, and the ole’ Valium at 4.2).

As far back as 2001, patients have been sharing their ratings, their side effects and their stories – influencing people of the successes and failures of virtually every Rx producton the market. That’s right, SINCE 2001! Your next response may be “Well, since I haven’t heard of it, it isn’t relevant.”

Not the case.

According to Compete.com, between November 2008 and November 2009, Askapatient.com saw approximately 1.5 million unique visitors. More people are beginning to catch wind of this resource – 40,000 more patients used the site in November 2009 than in November 2008.

Doing a Google search on the following:

“[drug name] side effects”

(ex. “Valium side effects”) should result in your product being displayed on Askapatient.com in the top 10 search results. Thank you Google for pushing 73% of unique visitors your way (smile).

What surprised me the most about Askapatient.com wasn’t the potential increase for AEs (reportable or not), but the actual positive ratings people gave these products. In fact, it took 15 searches to find a rating under 2.5 (we’ll leave that product anonymous). Believe it or not, people are saying good things about your products and they are using social media to do so.

Check the date again…it is still 2010.

Conclusion
Social conversations and ratings about your product are happening now. While you may not be able to directly inject into the conversation, you can formulate strategies that will ensure your product rating scores remain as high as possible. Train your reps well. Ensure HCPs have easy access to educational materials that inform patients about their drug regimens. Proactively drive patients and caregivers to sites and resources that ethically promote the benefits and risks of your product. In the end, your efforts will serve as a catalyst by which patients and advocates will paint your product in a positive light and increase the overall satisfaction score on networking sites like Askapatient.

Posted by Tim McLaughlin (@TPMcLaughlin), Senior Interactive Account Executive at Roska Digital Advertising.

Posted by Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer at 4:12 PM
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5 comments:

  1. Good post, yet again. I checked out this site. Great concept and data (but certainly needs a facelift). I just wrote about this same concept but focused on iGuard (http://bit.ly/9JKzWd).

    When I looked through Askapatient, I had the opposite experience from you. I couldn't find a single drug that was rated well (the statins took a beating). I began to wonder if anyone had anything positive to say. This is perhaps why I think the iGuard model is better. They don't allow everyone to rate the products, but rather pick a random sample of everyone who reported taking the product. This eliminates the people just looking to vent about (or promote) a specific product.

    Still, a valuable site to know about. There are three others besides these two that I reference in my post doing something similar, but I agree that they've been ignored (or not even know) by most pharma companies.

    Jonathan
    Dose of Digital
    ReplyDelete
  2. What is stop someone stacking the scores?
    ReplyDelete
  3. Absolutely agree on the facelift. Could use a redesign and richer user experience.

    With respect to models, iGuard was spawned out of Quintiles, so it definitely has more of the traditional market research rigor to it.

    Askapatient is much more of a free-form (dare I say) Cafepharma-type of community. There are nuggets of valuable information, but one does need to evaluate the merit of the score and perceived intention of the one posting.

    To your other point, there are at least three more similar sites. And the key takeaway for pharma is patients are talking. Both structured and unstructured. So, the more pharma and HCPs can do to educate, inform and provide transparent information to consumers, the better their scores will be -- regardless of the site where the final posts/scores appear.

    Kurt Mueller
    Chief Digital & Science Officer
    ReplyDelete
  4. With respect to prevention of stacking scores, nothing prevents this, just like nothing prevents score stacking in any 'truly' open environment.

    A perfect example of this is http://ow.ly/13fYE Only two posts exist for this rating and it is anyone's guess as to the authenticity of the posts.

    In other cases where there is an increased level of interaction http://ow.ly/13g0D/13fYE I believe the likelihood of stacking to be less (though it is still possible).

    One needs to take into consideration all of the variables before making a conclusion as to the value of ANY rating on Askapatient.

    One thing is clear, right or wrong, deck stacking or not, patients are going to Askapatient in search for product experience information from other patients. The more we can do to educate, inform, and make sure patients and HCPs have solid, credible information, the more likely the value and quality of sites like Askapatient will improve.

    Kurt Mueller
    Chief Digital & Science Officer
    ReplyDelete
  5. Bonjour! Trisha Gentry . payday loans
    ReplyDelete

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