Personality traits seem to play a much stronger role in patient empowerment than education, income or source of health insurance 

HealthCentral recently surveyed 2,888 people on their website with the following chronic conditions: acid reflux, asthma, breast cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, IBD and rheumatoid arthritis. The goal was to identify the traits of a patient who feels empowered to take the lead in managing his/her care. The authors came to some interesting conclusions.

Personality Counts
The study notes: “Personality traits seem to play a much stronger role in patient empowerment than education, income or source of health insurance.”

The study found that empowered patients have: “a high need for cognition, which means that they’re not happy with simply knowing a particular prescription successfully treats their condition, they want to know why it works. These people want to understand not only their condition but their treatment options.”

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Looking for drug information is the one activity that is significantly more popular among internet users with chronic diseases. 

You may have seen the headline that U.S. adults living with chronic disease are significantly less likely than healthy adults to have access to the internet (62% vs. 81%). I finally got a chance to read and analyze the full report “Chronic Diseases and the Internet” sponsored by the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation released March 24, 2010.

Having a chronic disease is generally associated with being older, African American, less educated and living in a lower-income household. The fascinating conclusion of this research is that when these demographics are factored out, having a chronic disease in and of itself has an independent, negative effect on someone’s likelihood to have internet access.

Once Online, They Get Social
Once online, the data shows having a chronic disease increases the probability that you will take advantage of social media to share what you know and learn from peers.
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It is human nature to enjoy helping others. 

Before you venture into social media, it’s a good idea to think about who will share your message. But more important, why would they want to share it?

Social media offers a powerful platform for spreading messages, but your strategy will only be successful if it’s aligned with the needs of your audience.

“It’s not about you,” is a slogan that could have been expressly written for social media.

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More important than someone simply “Liking” your brand page is having them interact and engage with that page.  

Facebook is changing again. This time the change involves asking users to connect to brands on the site in a different way. Rather than asking people to “Become a Fan” of their favorite brand pages, Facebook will instead let users click that they “Like” it. Pages will no longer gather “Fans” but “Connections” instead.

According to ClickZ, Facebook sent a memo to advertising agencies alerting them to the change. Since “Fanning” has become part of the vernacular I’m not sure why Facebook is messing with success. TechCrunch thinks it’s part of a bigger initiative to take over the concept of “Like” on the internet.

Not a Big Change
Only the name of the action is changing, not the action itself, so it really isn’t that big of a change.  And it shouldn’t impact brand pages. However, Facebook has said they do not plan to explicitly communicate about this change to users, so there will be some confusion.
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Last week the Center for Business Intelligence hosted its 9th Annual Forum on eMarketing for the Bio/Pharmaceutical Industry in Philadelphia, PA.

For me, the most powerful speaker was e-Patient Dave deBronkart, who shared his personal battle with Stage IV kidney cancer. Using what he learned online from other patients on ACOR, Dave was able to get into a clinical trial for Proleukin which saved his life. He told the room, “You will all be a patient one day.” Dave’s presence continued to be a reminder that pharma needs to focus on patients.

There were a variety of excellent speakers, but a few themes emerged.
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