Guest Post by Anne O’Brien If it is true that no publicity is bad publicity, then Facebook was the big winner at this week’s ePharma conference.  While the comments began as reprimand on the misuse and over-reliance on Facebook by the category as a whole, there were was the acknowledgement that Facebook can extend reach [...]

Fascinating panel discussion of leading patient advocates – Ann Bartlett, Dave deBronkart and Alicia Staley – moderated by Jeremy Shane at the ePharma Summit. My only complaint is that it was limited to half an hour. I was particularly struck by the unanimity on the panel that they welcome open interaction with pharma and that [...]

Guest Post by Ann Bartlett This week I traveled to Cleveland Clinic to hear industry leaders and medical professionals talk about diabetes, obesity and innovation.  Speakers were CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, biomedical firms and doctors.  Most of the focus at the summit was geared for industry people dealing with new device development and regulatory and [...]

I participated in an encouraging roundtable last week on “Examining the Roles of the FDA and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Social Media” hosted by AstraZeneca.  The participants included a variety of pharma marketers, patient advocates, online health companies, social media and health bloggers and industry analysts.  The discussion was thoughtful, insightful and exactly the kind [...]

Last night, in prep for today’s CBI patient panel, Ignite Health’s Fabio Gratton invited Alicia Staley, Ann Bartlett,  Diane Bayer and myself to a lovely dinner, all with the purpose to “plot for world domination” (as Alicia said it!) and talk about patient empowerment and pharmaceutical marketing. On nights like these, I’m always struck by [...]