There cannot be any mistake in this, Social Media is causing ‘Power’ to move towards Customers, or Patients, as in this case. I recently read an article on the effect of Social Media and it indicated that whereas (only) 17% of people believe what a Company is saying about their product, a stunning 86% of people believe what another customer is saying about a product.
So where does that leave the shiny company brochure or the state-of-the-art company website? Right, in the ‘recycle bin’!
Will this have any effect on the Pharmaceutical or Medical Device market? Or on Clinical Trials? Let’s say you are a Diabetes patient and need to check your Blood sugar levels. You start searching the internet, and guess what, Roche did its job very well and so the first ‘organic’ (non-paid) link brings you to the Company’s website:
and it seems to be an excellent product:
It must be the best product, it is described as “least painful” and they have ‘data on file’ on this statement.
However, and with a little bit more research, you also find a link to a Product review by an actual Diabetes patient and you read:
So which of the two products will you be using?
And what does this have to do with clinical trials? Well, I hopefully made my point that you cannot underestimate the ‘power of the patient’. In fact, my little example showed that companies can actually learn a lot from feedback of patients. And clinical trials are all about learning more on the effect of new drugs or new medical devices, isn’t it? So why not tap into a new source of knowledge and learn from Patients/Subjects feedback on the product under investigation? Excited (or scared?) about these options? Contact us to learn more about how integrating Social Media tools into your Clinical Trial Portal can help you to learn more about your patients experiences with your medical product.
