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Reader beware: social media & medical marketing

December 07, 2010 | by Nancy Belusky

Social media offers a variety of benefits to patients. I know this from my own family’s experience with caringbridge.org, which enabled my family to receive support during a challenging bout with a rare pediatric cancer. My niece is now cancer-free and thriving, but my sister-in-law is still often contacted by parents who are in the confusing whirlwind of initial diagnosis. They find her through social networks, or sometimes through nurses or other families who know she is willing to help. She responds to these families, explains, defines and directs to resources, in the hope that her knowledge can make their journey a little easier, even though we all know pediatric cancer is not easy in any sense of the word. That is the intent of social media in the medical context: what someone learns on their medical journey may help someone else cope better.

But what about using social media to promote unproven products or therapies? The website amednews.com (published by the American Medical Association) posted a story by Pamela Lewis Dolan on Dec. 6 about “dubious promotions” on social media. The story looks at research by Dr. Jeremy Greene and others about promotional activity on Facebook groups dealing with diabetes. What the research found was that while the majority of people posted only once, there were 9% who posted three or more times. Of that 9%, Dolan writes, “30% were clearly promoting products and 3% of the promotional posts contained inappropriate or unsupported therapeutic claims.” It sounds like a small amount, that 3%. But when you look at the volume of social media posts and the fact that Dolan’s report states, “The promotional activity is probably much higher because the researchers were very conservative about how they characterized the posts,” then you know that patients looking for information will easily find posts containing bad or potentially harmful information.

Ideally, to paraphrase Star Wars, “there will be balance in the Force” and for every harmful post, there are many more that give patients sound, helpful, and accurate information. “Primum non nocere – First, do no harm” should be the mantra of all good social media medical marketers.