Welcome to the inaugural issue of e-Patient Connections, where we share news and research related to finding, engaging, and educating today's digital health consumers. Keeping the mission broad we'll cover everything from ePharma marketing and social media strategy to patient education programs and innovations in the health 2.0 space.
 
We're trying hard to respect your time (and your inbox) by bringing you only must-read info in a lively format, but we need your help. Please forward this email to your colleagues to build our community, and give us your thoughts on what you like, what you don't like, and what you want to see more of in the future.

-  Kevin

New research conducted by HouseCall123's Cris Delnevo, PhD, MPH shows that many individuals with chronic insomnia are unsatisfied with both their primary care doctor as well as online health resources.

In a web-based survey of 537 people with chronic insomnia, 71% said they had spoken to their doctor about their problem, and about a third was unsatisfied with the outcome.

The vast majority indicated that they had good health literacy skills, and 61% turned to the Internet for health information within the last 12 months. A large portion was critical of what was found online:

• 21% found the online health information hard to understand
• 40% were frustrated by their search efforts
• 42% questioned the quality of the online health information

One surprise in the study related to their interest in free resources. While a predictable 44% expressed a desire for insomnia medication coupons, a full 50% of those surveyed requested downloadable relaxation music.

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In a publicity stunt worthy of PT Barnum, Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a race to see who could first amass one million followers on Twitter. It was a down-to-the-wire competition getting much media coverage. After Ashton won the contest, he appeared the next day on Oprah, who also signed up for Twitter and sent her first "tweet" in front of her 7 million viewers (primarily female, white, and over 55). And now that Oprah has plugged Twitter... well, you know what she does for books.

So why should you care? If you believe you need to go where the people are for publicity, marketing and sales you might find interesting:

• Twitter has an estimated 15 million visitors in March (quantcast)
• Twitter is the fastest growing site in the US, expanding 131% in one month (comscore)
• Twitter has more readers than the New York Times
• Over 225 hospitals now have twitter accounts

Think Twitter users are kids who aren't in your demographic? Think again, this graphic from comScore shows that 45-54 years old are actually the highest indexing group.




You can ignore social media, but it's not going away. Look for original Kru research on engaging e-Patients on Twitter next month.

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On April 21, 2009 Boehringer Ingelheim became the first pharma company to use Twitter to broadcast live their annual press conference. Using the hashtag #BIAPC09, and tweeting in both German and English, the 3 hour long session produced tweets like:

Boehringer began using Twitter in November of 2008 and is the leading life science company using the service with an authentic, community-building voice. John Pugh is the man behind the tweets and he actively recommends other online resources, participates in relevant conversations, and promotes other online and offline programs.

Two days after the Boehringer Tweet-cast, J&J's Marc Monseau covered his company's 2-hour annual meeting. Monseau first started using Twitter to cover J&J communications on Feb 13 of 2009.

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PatientsLikeMe, the poster-child for the Health 2.0 vendor community, is an online community where patients share their personal health data for the common good. They recently announced the launch of their Genetic Search Engine for people with ALS.  From their website:

The business model of PatientsLikeMe is to license their aggregated research to life science companies.

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Over 400 people gathered in Boston last week to review and debate the latest in the Health 2.0 and the "information therapy" (Ix) movements. Despite their differences, both Health 2.0 and Ix are focused on participatory medicine, the patient-physician partnership, and fostering the "e" in e-patients everywhere.

Read my blog post reviewing the conference, here.

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• e-Patient 2009 - October 26 & 27, 2009, Philadelphia, PA
• Social Marketing for Pharma: Expanding DTC for a Health 2.0 World - June 16, 2009, Princeton, NJ
• Health 2.0 - October 6 & 7, 2009, San Francisco, CA
• Medicine 2.0 - September 17&18, 2009, Toronto, Canada
• Games for Health - June 11 & 12, 2009, Boston, MA

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In This Issue

Insomniacs Demand Richer Online Experience

Ashton, Oprah and Twitter

Boehringer & J&J Twitter Leaders

New Search Engine for Patients

Health 2.0 Meeting Ix Conference

Upcoming Events

Share Your News

If your work includes finding, engaging, or educating today's e-Patients--whether a Health 2.0, ePharma marketing or patient education company--I want to hear about it. Shoot me an email to get us started.