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repository of non-specialist information available at the click of a mouse; and search engines
have rendered the content-organization issue virtually irrelevant. So nowadays, while a hypothetical patient with joint pain will see that Celebrex ad, (s)he is far
too smart to march into the doctor’s office and request Celebrex based on that one exposure.
Instead, (s)he will learn via an online search and/or visit to one or more health-information
portals that... - joint pain may have any of several causes, one of which is arthritis ...which comes in at
least two varieties; - a class of drugs abbreviated NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, both
prescription and OTCs) can be effective in mitigating both the inflammation and
consequent pain of osteoarthritis; - Celebrex is one of a number of NSAIDs, each having a spectrum of side effects and
interactions, some in common and some unique.
Our mythical patient may also browse through several blogs or forums to gain feedback from
actual users of Celebrex, or whichever drug (s)he is leaning toward. And all this is only in Stage I! Returning to our model, let’s now overlay the online tools likely
to be important in the various stages: - Awareness/interest: Search engines (Google/Yahoo/Ask/MSN, etc.); healthcare
portals; perhaps blogs, forums, social-network sites. - Diagnosis / course of treatment: Primarily a offline process, but patients are likely to
“assist” the physician by bringing documents they found in their Stage I search. - Purchase/treatment: Search engines; healthcare portals; blogs, forums, socialnetwork
sites. - Lifestyle/“Living-with”: Blogs, forums, social-network sites; email newsletters;
perhaps search engines, healthcare portals.
The challenge for the biotech or pharma company now is to provide targeted information to
the patient (/caregiver) at each stage of the condition/treatment lifecycle, via the vehicles
they’re most likely to be using at each stage. Our next section provides some guidance for
doing just that. << previous | next >>
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