Let’s vote – Power to the People at DigiPharm

We thought, let’s do things different. And so we did. During our presentation at DigiPharm 2009 we used our slot to interact with the audience. After 1,5 day of talking about the (im)possibilities of Social Media for Pharma, sharing Best practices, visions of the future and panel discussions we thought that it was time to measure the opinion of the participants. Because, as James Heywood (patientslikeme) said on day one: “The pharma industry is the only health care stakeholder that really cares, because they measure”. OK, we thought, if that’s the case, let’s measure. Or, in our own words, let’s opinionate.

Before our exercise started, every participant was given a green and a red voting card (an analogue voting system symbolizing pharma’s current position in the evolutionary ladder of Social Media). We presented 4 statements. For each statement we gave a pro and contra argument after which the audience entered the discussion, giving their support to either of the two positions. Finally, the discussion on each statement was closed by a vote. Those who agreed raised the green card, those who disagreed the red.

And here are the results:

Statement 1: In 3 years Twitter will have become a valuable communication tool for pharma

Statement 2: In the near future pharma regulations will become more flexible, which will help Web 2.0 initiatives

Statement 3: Implementation of Web 2.0 tools in pharma will have a positive effect on the reputation of pharma in society

Statement 4: Using Web 2.0 tools internally will spur innovation within pharma companies

Interesting results. In our following blog-posts we will elaborate more on each of these statements. We will share some of the responses from the audience and will give our own opinion.

We would like to thank all the delegates of DigiPharm for their co-operation in this ‘ad-hoc research’. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.