How can pharma use digital to improve collaboration with external experts?

24th September 2013 by Felix Jackson

I have been invited to moderate an unconference session at Health 2.0 Europe in London on 19th November to understand how pharma can use digital to improve collaboration with healthcare professionals and providers. To quote the Wikipedia explanation of the unconference format:
"Typically at an unconference, the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space. Unconferences typically feature open discussions rather than having a single speaker at the front of the room giving a talk, although any format is permitted. This form of conference is particularly useful when the attendees generally have a high level of expertise or knowledge in the field the conference convenes to discuss."
The title is 'Improving collaboration between the pharma industry and healthcare professionals.' We think:
"Pharmaceutical companies need to collaborate with experts more than ever to bring safe and effective medicines to market. But traditional ways to collaborate can be expensive, slow and complex. Meanwhile pharma and healthcare budgets are increasingly limited. Let’s use this informal ‘unconference’ session to explore better ways for pharma to collaborate digitally with healthcare professionals and providers. Bring your experiences and ideas, so we can collaborate to improve collaboration in healthcare."
Clearly, for this unconference session, we have not set the agenda or direction for the discussion beyond choosing the topic. The agenda must be created by the attendees in the session. But I'd like to get some thinking started to try and open your expert minds to help the discussion at the conference. Tell us what you think. Make a comment below. We'll be reviewing your thoughts at the beginning of the session to get the discussion started on the right track. How do you think pharma can use digital to improve collaboration with healthcare professionals and providers? Please share examples of how pharma is providing information digitally for professionals to easily find or follow, communicating directly with professionals online (both individually and in groups), running clinical trials with investigators using digital platforms and working with professionals to improve patient communications and disease awareness.
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