Brands in Social Media: Get out!

 

“Most businesses still struggle to find the Holy Grail of engagement with customers on social media, suggest a couple of new reports. If so, it’s not for want of tools to help them – but the real question is whether social network users want the big brands to be there at all. (…)

A study “warns that muscling in on social media can be detrimental to the brand, and that brands need to consider carefully how to build a relationship with their audience. But that still ignores the more fundamental question of whether, in the long term, social network users are going to tolerate sharing their space with business at all”.

 

Social networkers to business: “Get out!” , Tim Buckley Owen. VIVA VIP, Online 13th of Nov. 2011

 

http://web.vivavip.com/forum/LiveWire/read.php?i=32426

The best sources for med apps

An independent review of sources to retrieve medial applications.

iMedicalApps <http://www.imedicalapps.com> is an excellent source for reviews of medical apps by medical professionals. The site can be filtered by platform (Android, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone), medical specialty, or app “type” (calculators, drug reference, textbooks, etc.). Postings include reviews of individual apps, comparisons of similar apps, and “top 10” type lists by topic, as well as news stories about the mobile industry in medicine. Reviews are written by a team of physicians and medical students. The reviews generally include screenshots and describe the app in context with others in that category. Strengths and weaknesses are highlighted, and individual user pricing is provided. A really simply syndication (RSS) feed is available. The reviews and categories are aimed at medical professionals looking for apps to use on their own devices.

PCWorld writers review apps for Apple and Android on PCWorld’s AppGuide <http://www.pcworld.com/appguide/>, alongside user-contributed reviews. It is easy to spot the PCWorld-written reviews versus user-contributed reviews. A few of the health app reviews were written by invited health professionals, but most are not. Reviews focus on functionality, interface, and ease of use rather than quality of evidence.

The Gizmodo blog <http://gizmodo.com/apps/> focuses on productivity and utility apps. Detailed reviews of medical apps are not present.

Other sources:

Apps: finding the best. Reviewed by Jennifer Reiswig, MLS. J Med Libr Assoc. 2011 October; 99(4): 326–327.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193360/

Quality of the Drug information in Wikipedia: inconsistent

The quality of drug information in Wikipedia continues to be inconsistent, increasing the risk that consumers and practitioners may inappropriately rely on it.

Natalie Kupferberg, MLS, MA, AHIP. Accuracy and completeness of drug information in Wikipedia: an assessment. J Med Libr Assoc. 2011 October; 99(4): 310–313.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193353/

Web 2.0 apps for medical organisations are rather positive in the long run

The investigation of Web 2.0 applications in medical-related organisations is of critical importance. Recent trends have indicated the increasing use of Web 2.0 tools in the health sector as shown through a large number of studies.To date, most of the research on Web 2.0 in health has focused on the individual level, e.g. how individuals such as physicians, medical students and patients use Web 2.0. However, research on the institutional/organisation level, more specifically, how medical-related organisations use Web 2.0 is meagre.

Therefore, this study attempts to give an overview of the trends and issues associated with medical-related organisations’ (University Medical Libraries,Public Hospitals and Non-profit Medical Organisations) adoption or non-adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.

Results showed that knowledge and information sharing and the provision of a better communication platform were rated as the main purposes of using Web 2.0. Time constraints and low staff engagement were the most highly rated difficulties. In addition, most participants found Web 2.0 to be beneficial to their organisations. Medical-related organisations that adopted Web 2.0 technologies have found them useful, with benefits outweighing the difficulties in the long run.

Samuel KaiWa h Chu,  Matsuko Woo,  Ronnel B. King,  Stephen Choi,  Miffy Cheng,  Peggy Koo. Examining the application of Web 2.0 in medical-related organisations. Health Information & Libraries Journal. Article first published online: 17 NOV 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2011.00970.x

Big Pharma: sorry, the Golden Age is over!

“People who invest in pharma companies have to expect, not as a permanent condition, but as a long term trend, a lower rate of return than they had during the golden blockbuster years…”

Armstrong, Drew. Drugmakers’ Returns on Research Fall as Pipeline Projects Fail. Bloomberg.com, online, posted on Nov. 21, 2011.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/drugmakers-returns-on-research-fall-as-pipeline-projects-fail.html#

 

Reading: for citations, scholars rely more on print than on web materials

According a recent suty, scholars use web materials but rely more on paper-based material.

The relationship between the print and web citation over time (year) was significant. The most prevalent domain of citations was html and the most favorable and persistent file format was pdf.The web resources are used for their easy accessibility and the support they provide for a scientific content. While direct accessibility to a web citation is not provided, many strategies are adopted to recover the dead citation.

The issue is to what extent the authors rely on web resources and are they finished with citing paper-based materials? Are web resources becoming replaced with their print counterparts? The study showed that scholars still rely more on print resources than on the web materials

Riahinia, N., Zandian, F., Azimi, A.Web citation persistence over time: A retrospective study. Electronic Library, Volume 29, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 609-620.
htttp://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02640471111177053

SharePoint: 2 curated pages

http://www.scoop.it/t/ms-sharepoint

http://www.scoop.it/t/sharepoint (French and English)

Open Access: there is something wrong!

If 89% of researchers positively recognise the benefits of OA journals but only 8% of them publish in OA journals, there is something wrong.

OA is an alternative model but it has also created new barriers: the so called “author pays” logic (stressed by 39% of the surveyed researchers). It’s worth working on that in the next few years.

Paola Castellucci & Elena Giglia, reporting the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, in:
D-Lib Magazine, November/December 2011, Volume 17, Number 11/12
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november11/castellucci/11castellucci.html

Cardiac arrest and resuscitation in Twitter

Discussion about cardiac arrest on Twitter is common and represents a new opportunity to provide life saving information to the public, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

The Penn researchers evaluated cardiac arrest- and resuscitation-related Tweets during a month-long period in the spring of 2011 and discovered hat users frequently share information about CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and discuss resuscitation topics in the news.
Although their findings indicate that use of the platform to ask questions about cardiac arrest appears to be only in its infancy, the authors suggest that Twitter represents a unique, promising avenue to respond to queries from the public and disseminate information about this leading killer

“Twitter is an incredible resource for connecting and mobilizing people, and it offers users a way to receive instant feedback and information. The potential applications of social media for cardiac arrest are vast,”

Read more on:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/237574.php

The TOP 100 most innovative companies

named by Reuters-Thomson, based on a series of patent-related metrics (from DWPI).

Only 2 pure Pharma:

•  Bayer, Germany
• BMS, USA

Read further on:

http://www.top100innovators.com/