How to connect with physicians online
What social sites physicians use—and why they use them
By on Jan 4, 2012More than 65% of physicians have used at least one social media site to support their professional practice and nearly 90% use social media for personal use. Facebook tops the list for personal use, while online physician communities drive professional use. More than 20% of clinicians use two or more sites each for personal and professional purposes.
These are just a few of the interesting stats from a study of 4,033 clinicians conducted by QuantiaMD and Care Continuum Alliance. Mary Modahl, Chief Communications Officer of QuantiaMD, has been an active participant in the #SocPharm tweetchats. I asked Mary what the results suggest for healthcare communication. “Physicians are increasingly comfortable with social media, particularly in private clinician communities, but these are still early days,” she said.
“The study shows physicians increasingly connecting with each other for professional consults, learning, and secure document sharing. In the next few years, physician connection will change the face of medicine. It famously takes 17 years for a medical innovation to be adopted across the US. As physicians connect, this could fall to 17 months, and maybe eventually to 17 days.”
The study found that 28% of physicians use professional physician communities, which is consistent with a Manhattan Research report from earlier this year showing 24%. Study participants see the potential in online interactions with patients but have concerns around patient privacy, liability and their compensation. I was surprised that only 11% of the physicians were familiar with online patient communities. Those who were familiar believe they positively impact patient health, particularly for patients with chronic diseases, cancer and rare diseases.
About half of these physicians say they would be comfortable with serving as a source of professional advice for an online patient community or engaging anonymously to better understand these communities. (For more on online patient communities, see Pharma and online communities: What you should know.)
Since QuantiaMD is a physician community, they smartly included 854 physicians in the sample who had no prior connection to the site. Of course, whenever you have a study performed electronically about online use, you will get participants who are comfortable using the technology. Note that the study excluded responses from current QuantiaMD members for the question pertaining to physician community use.
For the right biopharma brands, there’s an opportunity to use online physician communities to educate physicians on brands and patient support programs. I’ve summarized the key findings, but if you are interested in this topic I highly recommend reading the full report.
Eileen O'Brien is director of search and innovation at Siren Interactive. She blogs at Sirensong.
For more on reaching physicians online, join the sector's other key players at KOL & Stakeholder Engagement Europe on Feb 21-Feb 22 in Berlin, SFE Europe and eMarketing Europe on March 27-29 in Barcelona, and SFE USA on May 30-31 in New Brunswick.
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