It’s a beautiful morning in Philadelphia - I’m here for two days to attend two separate health conferences on behalf of HealthTalker.  The first is Social Health (SXSH), the brainchild of our good friend Shwen Gwee (@Shwen).  This one-day unconference is debunking the theory of a conference, and I like what I see already. We’re here to make the pharmaceutical industry a more social place (imagine that!).  The second conference is the now famous ePatient Connections with keynote from the one and only Seth Godin.  We're all big Seth-heads at HealthTalker, and I'm psyched to hear his take on the pharma space.

In an industry where I sometimes struggle to figure out who the client is - the pharmaceutical company or the patient - I’m really excited to learn more about how I can improve the user experience for a patient or caregiver who is enrolled in a word of movement program with HealthTalker. These two days will hopefully introduce new ideas, tools and best-practices for me to not only improve how I do my job, but provide me with perspective to understand the audience I am working for.

As a regulated industry, the concept of simply building and shipping a social media-centric program is not an option. The barriers for entry are so high and potentially destructive (FDA – unclear or inaccurate information) that the industry is forced to limite exposure to people’s opinions.

Consider this: instead of always speaking, perhaps the first step is to figure out a better way to listen.

While there is no silver bullet for any of these, below are a few questions I would love to answer on my trip to Philadelphia:

1.      Can the pharma industry become social without borders?

2.      Can people love/like pharma brands?

3.      How do you capture positive stories without worrying too much about the negative?

Stay tuned!  I'll report back in the days ahead.