Sermo in the Blogsphere

HEALTH2.0: Sermo, Pfizer: Big Pharma puts big toe in social networking waters

The Health Care Blog

October 15, 2007

You can’t trust those Brits. I get a super exclusive on the Sermo-Pfizer deal and those damn Brits at the FT break the press embargo. So much for “honour” amongst journalists!

This is the latest version of Big Pharma’s experiment to figure out how to replace the incredibly inefficient way it researches, sells to and communicates with doctors. The very baby steps of starting to cut those detail forces are just starting to be taken, but while those empires slowly get dismantled over the coming decade(s), something needs to be put into its place. eDetailing via video has been a bust so far, and putting those hot cheerleaders into the doctor’s office is getting more and more expensive.

So the deal is that Pfizer (and of course soon other pharmas) will be able to put information into the social networking site. This has great opportunity and great peril for big Pharma. Of course there’s lots of information that they can contribute, and lots of contacts that they can make. But on the other hand, they are definitely losing control over the message.

Here’s what the press release (still embargoed but not, if you see what I mean) says:

Pfizer, working together with Sermo’s physician community and other Sermo partners, plans to pursue a number of key objectives through this collaboration, including:

• Discover, with physicians, how best to transform the way medical information is exchanged in the fast-moving social media environment


• Create an open and transparent discussion with physicians through the innovative channel offered by online exchange


• Engage with the FDA to define guidelines for the use of social media in communications with healthcare professionals


• Work with physicians to develop a productive exchange between pharmaceutical professionals and the Sermo community

In other words Pfizer doesn’t really know what to expect. Of course there’s lots of great clinical information in the world of Pharma, much of which doesn’t get out to doctors. So they might be helped by that.

On the other hand you don’t have to read much of what Marcia Angel and John Abramson write to figure out that the way that information is presented to doctors isn’t exactly unbiased much of the time. And that bias converts into lots of branded product scripts being written when a generic will do nicely instead.

Any information placed within Sermo (or any social networking site) by Pfizer is by definition going to be validated and commented upon by lots of physicians and also voted on in Sermo’s model. And included in “lots of physicians” are many who don’t like pharma and are very suspicious about it indeed. I am sure that Sermo has lots of these doctors in its midst and I am equally sure that they would be delighted to get their say on pharma’s message.

Now of course this is baby steps and no matter how big this or any other deal it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of billions spent on detailing, CME, samples and trips to Hawaii. But it’s a start.

So if pharma really is prepared to take the plunge, the conversation might just be about to get a whole lot more honest. Which I think will be great for patients, great for doctors and great for society. I’m not sure how great it may end up being for Pfizer and big Pharma. But it seems that Sermo is now too big to ignore, and I’m sure that the several other social networking sites for doctors are following right along!

But then again, the health care world is aghast with the news that Pfizer’s relatively new CEO is a Dimmycrat! Perhaps they should send him to Colorado, where they get rid of them in an unusual way!

View blog