Yesterday was totally bananas. I highly recommend checking out our Instagram and Facebook stories. Keep an eye on our Instagram feed and story today; a few socialites (is that a correct use of that word?) on our social team are at the Instagram Health Summit, soaking up the latest highly relevant content for pharma brands. A lot of the info will be under NDA, but the team will aim to share some nuggets in tomorrow’s Scoop as well.
Apple update from Mark Pappas, VP, SEM & Emerging Media: The Apple Developer Conference keynote was yesterday and Apple has rolled out some new health features for Apple Watch:
- Activity trends give you a more complete picture of your activity over time to give you a better picture of how you have been doing.
- Hearing Health – notifies you when sounds are loud enough around you to impact your hearing. It uses the watch microphone to measure decibels to see if sound can impact your hearing.
- Cycle Tracking gives you a simple discreet way to monitor your cycle including a Fertility window. Apple has also made Cycle Tracker available on the iPhone as well.
Facebook update from Meagan Dollard, Associate Analyst, Social Media: Facebook is continuing to update their algorithm to serve the most relevant content at the top of users’ Newsfeeds. In addition to prioritizing content from close friends and favorite brands, the Facebook algorithm will also take into account Pages and Groups that users care most about. Indicators of favorite Pages and Groups include how long a user has followed a Page or been in a Group, user engagement with the Page/Group, and how often the Page or Group posts. The frequency of organically posting may become even more important in order to rank highly on a user’s Facebook Newsfeed. Marketers will need to find a balance between organically posting enough to qualify as priority content, but not too much to be considered clickbait. This algorithm update aligns with Facebook’s initiative to prioritize groups, which was announced at F8. Stay tuned for our POV, which will be released later this month, on how this will better facilitate health conversations and potentially attract more patients and caregivers to the platform.
What is truly important to patients? New reports show the evolution of personal health over the last decade; for example, more people are concerned about anxiety than obesity today, and concern about health overall includes wellbeing and happiness.
In a test to gauge how easy it is for addicts to get help, particularly in high-overdose areas, researchers pretended to be addicts trying to get addiction treatment doctor appointments. The results were really pretty sad. Much of the contact information on the government resource website they used was out of date. Once they found the correct information, it took several calls to reach someone to make an appointment. And in many cases they were still denied an appointment, particularly if they were on Medicaid.
North Face is apologizing after a campaign that involved hacking Wikipedia pages to add beauty shots of their products. Being on Wikipedia is strong for brands, but you gotta earn it, baby.
This essay by a physician calls for better sleep in the hospital – for both patients and HCPs. She notes that sleep is essential to health, but patients are routinely woken throughout the night for vitals checks. She also notes that physicians are often expected to work on very little sleep, although as another doctor she quotes says, “It’s worthwhile remembering that after being awake for 22 hours straight, you are as cognitively impaired as if you were legally drunk. Nobody would accept medical care from an inebriated doctor. Yet we must accept medical care from doctors who are similarly impaired due to the lack of sleep the system imposes on them.”
Here’s a few stories that will give you hope for the world.
- Zappos is piloting a program selling single shoes, which resulted from a customer request. This is a big deal for people with disabilities who need only one shoe or need different sizes.
- An audible hockey puck has been developed for visually impaired hockey players. Previous to this innovation, they had to create their own puck from ball bearings to be able to hear where it was, but once the puck stopped moving they could no longer locate it. Thanks to Kristine Dyer, Director, Media, for this story.