The World of Informed Marketers™

A colleague forwarded me an excellent piece from Forrester’s “Groundswell” blog on creating social applications in the life sciences/healthcare field.  This is the first articulation I’ve seen of some of the real issues faced in building such applications.  The value medical device, diagnostic, and drug companies can provide through this mechanism is tremendous – and we are  helping many of these organizations create web applications as value-added services to their customers.  However, the issue we always face is understanding the regulatory boundaries since there are not yet clear guidelines from the FDA, and as such many internal regulatory groups do not know how the application should be treated.

As a result, the [intangible] cost of creating these value-added services goes up considerably due to the need of moderation services, etc. – not to mention the number of iterations we go through figuring out which features or capabilities will make it through regulatory approval and which ones will not.  In fact, I was at a conference in Chicago just yesterday talking to senior executives from some large healthcare companies struggling with this very issue.

Framework for Application Audience

We had a great discussion about the incredible value social applications can provide to patients and in-turn back to the company (using the right CRM techniques of course), but both where to start and how to manage the regulatory environment are still open issues.  This framework from the Forrester piece (pictured right) provides an excellent starting point for at least the first issue in terms of where to start and how to think about where other disease states fit in.

As far as getting through the regulatory questions around this, I’m confident that technology is moving fast enough that we will soon see regulations catch up.  This will allow us to effectively innovate without worrying about creating an application that “will get you fired” as the title of the article so eloquently suggests.

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