Not unlike the grass root movement of the '60's hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets. This time it is the virtual streets of social media where  the raw voices of people are fighting their battle. This time the cause is healthCARE.

Notes from the 23^rd Drug Information Association Clinical Data Management conference

Sometimes we tend to forget that everything we do is for the patient.

I was reminded of this when listening to a talk by Laura Esserman of the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco. Dr. Esserman described her clinical work in the area of breast cancer and the recognition that patients themselves could be the source for electronic health records (EHR). Once collected, these records could be used to match patients to clinical trials. In other words, the EHR becomes the source of data for patient recruitment.

First, Toby, Elisa and I would like to thank all of the kind people who attended our session. Your engagement in the session made it a resounding success. We hope you found the discussion valuable.

As promised, we have made the slides available on our individual websites. A list of webpages that were discussed is forthcoming. I was tapped with that job, but I got back home around midnight and haven't had time to cypher my notes and pull them together yet.

So now -- what you've been waiting for... the links to where you can find the slides:

A recent request from a trusted.md reader sought my opinion about the response given to the US Senate Finance Committee related to the use of continuing education programs by the pharmaceutical industry to further the use of their drugs.

As an industry insider and someone who has worked for or has consulted to a large number of biopharma companies over a 34+ year period, I am in a good position to answer your questions whether mundane or controversial.

Normally, I write on information management topics on my own blog, The Laszlo Letter. That, however, is geared toward other insiders who are simply trying to do their jobs better and want some opinions or guidance from others in the industry.

The Questions: What would you do if you were charged with developing a national healthcare policy that could impact millions of people? How would you involve citizens, the healthcare community and other stakeholders to ensure that their ideas and questions were heard and discussed? That was the challenge facing the Health and Human Services Department as it prepared for an important Leadership Forum on pandemic preparedness.

Those little search spiders sure do love indexing blog posts. With fresh content, HTML codes and relevant inbound links blogs & search engines go together like waiting rooms and 5 year old Reader Digests (only kidding!). The result is that blogs frequently rise about traditional websites like in Google, Yahoo! and MSN in rankings. As of 3-27-07 Technorati (a search engine that tracks blogs and pages with RSS feeds) was monitoring 72.7 million blogs.

What happens when the search is for something more serious than pet care or Anna Nicole Smith or even healthcare marketing information? What happens when you are searching for medical healthcare information? Do you click on a blog or on a website? How do you determine the trustworthiness of the information?

Fard Johnmar, Envision Solutions was curious too. He wanted answers to two questions:

Referral of patients to appropriate care is a key tenet of the every medical practice law and ethics code that direct the provision of healthcare services across the US. Subsequently, peers and colleagues are very important resources to physicians and healthcare providers.

On an informal basis, healthcare providers develop a network of colleagues with whom they can consult with and collaborate on the management of certain cases. There is no offical submission of expertise, training, and knowledge that starts the relationships. Instead, they grow over time as cases come and go and advise and feedback is given and accepted.

Niche marketing is the process of finding a specific group of consumers and targeting services toward them. One of the big pay-offs of niche marketing is that, if done correctly, it can result in a loyal customers that come back often and refer friends.

Niche marketing is not often discussed in healthcare. I think this is because of a few reasons.

• Our system in the US is focused on integrated delivery systems that try to be one stop shops.
• To date, healthcare marketing does not focus on customer retention.
• Healthcare providers are afraid if they target specific audiences that they will have to develop special programs.

Rather than creating new programs to attract patient/consumers, a good niche marketing strategy starts with assessing the services you provide and determining the ones in which you really excel. Examine why you are good at providing those services and quantify the keys to your success.

During my Christmas break, I had a few moments to sit down and indulge in some absurd hours of quality TV time catching up on all of my missed episodes of Poirot and Midsomer Murders. During that time, commercials came, were muted and then I was returned back to my indulgent, guilty pleasure of doing nothing and watching TV.

At that time, once series of commercials always scared me and made me gasp-- even after the second and third run. I have not seen them since, but I still remember the company and product. They were Volkswagon commercials where there are a car full of people driving along talking about mundane things (the funniest being the men talking about the side effects disclaimer of DTC advertising of ED medications) and then from out of nowhere-- CRASH! Head on, side impact-- in the filming the other car just appears. Then the commercial closes with everyone out of the car, shocked but ok--- illustrating the safety of the vehicles. Click here and select "Like" to see one of the ads.

In a new spin on using the unexpected, State Farm has started the "Now What" ad campaign. They are using a series of short films where bad things unexpectedly happen to people's property and then you see the logo and webaddress for the "Now What" campaign. Which in no longer than it took to fire up old bessie, had me typing in the web address and seeing what all of this is about.

Why does this work so well and how can we use it in healthcare?