Analysis of the pharma industry's first.ever tweet chat: Boehringer Ingelheim's #ChatAfib, staged during the 2013 European Society of Cardiolgy Congress. The first of two presentations exploring the impact of social media and digital technologies on professional medical conferences

1. #ChatAfib
One small step for a
pharma, one giant leap for
the pharma industry
Len Starnes digital healthcare consultant

2. #ChatAfib
Tweet chat staged by
Boehringer Ingelheim
2 September 2013 during the
European Society of Cardiology
Congress 2013
Cardiovascular disease
& thrombosis in women

3. A giant leap for the
pharma industry.
Hyperbole?
Consider this…

4. The pharma industry’s
first-ever tweet chat
Open to all stakeholders
Facilitated real-time
engagement with a pharmaco
Staged during a major
professional medical conference

5. Signalled
lateral thinking
in pharma participation at
professional medical conferences

6. 1
2
3
Conferences
2023
Deconstructing
#ChatAfib
Participants’
perspectives

7. Conferences
2023

8. Conferences & meetings still
dominate pharma
marketing budgets
Column1
18%
Pharma execs report conferences
& meetings take largest channel
share of marketing budgets
Column1
82%
Pharma execs report using
conferences & meetings
to target HCPs
MM&M Healthcare Marketers Trend Report 2013, June 2013,
n=200 execs from pharma, biotech, medtech

9. Annual pharma
conference budgets?
Typically several million

10. Major shift to following medical
conferences online
29%
18%
EU doctors accessing
recorded audio/video
from conferences
Column1
EU doctors streaming
live audio/video
from conferences
Sales
Taking the Pulse Europe, Manhattan Research 2012

11. In future conferences will
be radically different
Increasing openness
& transparency
by pharmacos at
conferences
Virtual pharma booths
Open engagement
365-day events
Participant-determined
agendas
Physical pharma booths
Sponsored sessions
Temporal limitations
Pharma-directed agendas
Conferences today
Conferences tomorrow

12. In future virtual attendees will
outnumber physical
1600
1400
Attendees
Physical conference attendees
Virtual conference attendees
1200
1000
800
600
Baseline = 100%
Number of physical
conference
attendees 2010
400
200
0
2010
2013
2015
Scenario based on current growth of virtual vs physical conference attendees
2020
2023

13. Deconstructing #ChatAfib

14. Compelling business logic
Major annual investment
by BI in ESC congress
participation
Increases trust
in BI by afib
stakeholders
Increases reach
& influence
Leverages significant
existing experience by BI
in social media engagement
Taps into captive
real & virtual
ESC audiences
Focuses discussion on
critical afib/stroke issues

15. Remarkably low cost

16. Boehringer: willing to engage
the afib/stroke community
15 Percent Twitter
15
following/followers
on corporate
pharma accounts
Axis Title
10
10
5
5
Indicator of
uni-directional
mindset
2.7%
Pharmas competing
in global anticoagulant
market
14%
5.3%
3.7%
0.9%
Status
5.11.13
0
Bayer
BMS
Pfizer
JnJ
Boehringer

17. Simple rules
Independent moderator
Not intended as medical advice
Not for discussing treatments
Follow-up on any SEs mentioned
Not intended for US audiences
3 KOL guests
4 set topics

18. Participants included…
Patients
Patient orgs
Doctors
Boehringer HQ
Boehringer NL
Boehringer ES

19. Engagement by multiple
functions within Boehringer
Global
Medical

20. Over 3 million impressions
http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/chatafib

21. Activity across 5 days
Live event
Pre-event
warm-up
Reach
Post-event
discussion
Engage
Retain

22. Intelligent
use of
infographics
post event
Summary
of 4 key
discussion
topics

23. Participants’
perspectives

24. The European Society
of Cardiology’s
perspective

25. Ben Hainsworth
Director Congresses
& Meetings Division
European Society of Cardiology
‘In future virtual attendees at ESC congresses will
complement the physical, enabling speakers to
present from any corner of the world, and
facilitating a far greater exchange of knowledge
and opinion. Social interaction will take place
before, during and after the physical event, thus
transforming congresses from temporally-limited
into 365-day initiatives.

26. Boehringer
Ingelheim’s
perspective

27. ‘ We’ believed in the power of
ve
social media, especially Twitter,
to get us closer to key groups for
many years. Activities like #ChatAfib
and #ChatCOPD were great to be
part of but we ’ only at the start
re
of what we think will be achieved.
Boehringer Ingelheim
6 November 2013

28. A participating
cardiologist’s
perspective

29. Angela Maas
Professor Women’s Cardiac Health
Radboud University Nijmegen
The Netherlands
Well organized
But too much industry-driven activity
Undefined target audience
Public, doctors, other?
Topic too broad
Better to focus on single trials/guidelines

30. Angela Maas
Professor Women’s Cardiac Health
Radboud University Nijmegen
The Netherlands
In future
Run after hot-line sessions
For example with main presenters
Organize with support from guideline committees
Discuss 1-2 issues to keep debate focused
Collaborate with ESC leaders to get closer
to cardiologists

31. A participating
patient’s
perspective

32. Mellanie True Hills
Founder & CEO,
American Foundation
for Women's Health
and StopAfib.org
‘Twitter has become an invaluable tool for those of
us who attend medical conferences….through
Twitter, we learn the key points from sessions that
we cannot attend.

33. Mellanie True Hills
Atrial fibrillation patient
‘Seeing companies that are highly-regulated
participate in social media is a most interesting
trend, and having Boehringer Ingelheim sponsor
a tweet chat at ESC, in two languages, no less, was
quite novel…

34. ‘The topic was quite novel, and near and dear to my
heart… we focus on cross-pollenization across
social media, repeating our key tweets from medical
conferences on Facebook and Google+ so patients
have access to this information in whatever is their
preferred social medium.

35. A participating
medical journalist’s
perspective

36. Dr Paul Tunnah
CEO PharmaPhorum
The immediacy of Twitter makes it a more
ideal platform for active discussion than platforms
such as Facebook and LinkedIn
Pharma can commit to dialogue within a predefined time
window with all participants understanding this is when
a response is likely to be procured, thus managing
expectations
Using hashtags allows pharmas to engage with much
broader audiences than just their followers and also align
around specific events, such as disease congresses

37. The written nature of the discussion makes it easier to
follow and interpret, and gives it a longer shelf-life due to
downstream transcripts which are easily produced and
engaged with
The theme and target audience can be specified in
advance, plus written responses to inappropriate dialogue
or issues such as adverse event reporting can be prepared
in advance, as can downstream management processes,
making it ‘compliance friendly’

38. The future of
pharma tweet chats
Continuous tweet chats aligned around specific
disease areas
Integration of tweet chats with other channels
Input into better understanding of brand
positioning, additional services, new product
development, plus improved corporate brand

39. A participating
social business
consultant’s
perspective

40. Andrew Spong
Social business developer
focused on health communications
‘A properly prepared, efficiently moderated,
fully compliant tweet chat poses negligible
risk, and can deliver benefits to everyone
involved.
Early pharma adopters of tweet chats at
professional conferences will benefit quickly;
late entrants will struggle to find a space to
occupy.

41. Andrew Spong
Co-founder of the European
Twitter-based community
Healthcare Social Media Europe
#hcsmeu
‘2013 was the first time that social didn’feel
t
like a fringe activity at professional conferences.
Pharmaceutical companies should commit
sufficient resource in their 2014 budget to
support the anticipated spike in social activities
such as tweet chats at conferences in 2014, and
prepare for their being considered mainstream
by 2015.

42. Learnings for pharma
Medical societies will increasingly use social media
and digital technologies to transform the format
of their events
New formats are likely to be common practice
by 2015
Pharma has a unique opportunity to rethink its
traditional participation model and increase
returns from its future conference investments

43. Learn more
#ChatAfib transcripts & analytics
http://tinyurl.com/mvc6etz
#hcsmeu chat 18 October 2013:
Use of Twitter & tweetchats at
professional medical conferences
Transcripts & analytics:
http://tinyurl.com/luldukt

44. This is the first of two presentations
exploring the impact of social media
and digital technologies on
professional medical conferences
Part 1: #ChatAfib. One small step for a
pharma, one giant leap for the pharma
industry
Part 2: The medical conference is dead,
long live the medical conference

45. A sincere thanks to the following for
their help and support in developing
this presentation
•
Ben Hainsworth, European Society of Cardiology
@escardio
•
Professor Angela Maas, Radboud University Nijmegen
@MaasAngela
•
John Pugh & colleagues at Boehringer Ingelheim
@JohnPugh @Boehringer
•
Andrew Spong, stwem.com @andrewspong
•
Mellanie True Hills, StopAfib.org @stopafib
•
Paul Tunnah, pharmahorum @pharmaphorum

46. Len Starnes
lenstarnes@gmail.com
T: + 49 30 781 5513
M: + 49 172 1788253
Skype: lenstarnes
linkedin.com/in/lenstarnes
twitter.com/lenstarnes
slideshare.net/lenstarnes