The Bayer Healthcare Grants4Apps® Team Receives the 6th Annual Pharmaguy SoMobile Pioneer Award!

For immediate release:

Philadelphia, PA, October 29, 2015: Today, at the ePatient Connections conference, Pharmaguy presented the 6th Annual Pharmaguy™ SoMobile Pioneer Award to Bayer HealthCare Grants4Apps (#G4A) team.

Team Members Include:

• Esther-Kristin Lather, Program Manager (left in photo)
• Jesus del Valle, Head of Grants4Apps (center in photo)
• Mathilde Saingeon, Match Maker (right in photo)
• Jannis Busch, Operations (not shown) 

The Bayer HealthCare Grants4Apps™ program invites health app developers to submit their innovative app ideas for novel software that contributes to improving health outcomes or pharmaceutical processes. Bayer HealthCare considers an "App" as software solution based on any platform. The program offers dedicated office space for five digital health startups to support them in further advancing their projects and business models. Each startup receives up to 50,000 Euros. Bayer offers experienced managers as coaches to the startups, in addition to intensive mentoring by external entrepreneurs.

What is the Pharmaguy SoMobile Pioneer Award?

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The Irrelevance of Social Media for Pharma Marketing

The pharmaceutical industry has often been criticized for being behind the "digital curve," meaning that it lacks the expertise to fully take advantage of the Internet and social media to improve marketing and communications.

Back in 2013, I suggested that pharma was on the "Slope of Enlightenment" of the "digital" hype curve (here).

Since then, the FDA has come out with some social media guidelines (read, for example, FDA Sets Up a Roadblock for Branded Rx Promotional Tweets and Drug Industry Rips Into FDA Over Social Media Guidelines) and I sense that pharma has moved along the curve, but the curve itself - which I am now calling the Social Media (SM) Hype Curve - has changed and it looks something like this:

Click on image for an enlarged view.

What do I mean by "Slow Slide Into Irrelevance?"

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WANTED: Pharma Mobile Pioneers

For the past few years I have been following and reporting on mobile health initiatives, campaigns, and apps developed by pharmaceutical companies. I've collected these articles, blog posts, and podcasts in one BIG compendium: the Pharma Mobile & mHealth Reprint Catalog (FREE!).

A few pharma mobile initiatives are good, many are not so good, and a few are just awful and potentially dangerous such as a physician diagnosis mobile app recalled by Pfizer (read "The First Ever 'Dear Doctor' Letter Regarding a Mobile Medical App Recall").

Regardless of the results, I believe it is important to recognize the pioneers within the pharmaceutical industry who are leading the way in developing mobile solutions for physicians and/or patients. That's why I am expanding the scope of my annual PharmaGuy Social Media Pioneer Award to include Mobile as well.

Here's how you can help me in my quest for Pharma Mobile Pioneers.

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FDA Says It Will Not Regulate Low-Risk Mobile Health Apps as Medical Devices

"CDRH [FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health] does not intend to examine low risk general wellness products to determine whether they are devices within the meaning of the FD&C Act," says a new guidance posted today on the FDA website ("General Wellness: Policy for Low Risk Devices. Draft Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff").

Recall FDA's "Mobile medical apps Proposed Scope for Oversight" pyramid:

There are three parts of the pyramid:

1. The top of the pyramid includes mobile medical apps that are traditional medical devices or a part or an extension of a traditional medical device. Clearly within the scope of being regulated as medical devices. 
2. The middle section includes patient self- management apps and simple tracking or trending apps not intended for treating/adjusting medication. This is the area, as defined by CDRH, for enforcement discretion 
3. The bottom section are devices that are not deemed “mobile medical apps” and, as such, have no regulatory requirements.

The guidance released today is an attempt to define the boundary between parts 2 and 3 of the pyramid and to clarify what FDA meant in a 2012 guidance when it said this:

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US Internet Users Don't Need No Stinkin' Mobile Apps!

Pharmaceutical companies have a lot of apps in the market, and have been making apps for a long time, but their apps aren’t seeing downloads and usage on par with the apps from other industries.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from Research2Guidance (R2G), which analyzed more than 725 apps from 11 pharma companies. According to R2G, the top pharma companies have 65 apps in the Apple and Google Play app stores on average, compared to 1 to 2 apps from the average health app publisher. However, even the pharma companies with the most downloaded apps have only accrued 6.6 million downloads since 2008 and can boast less than 1 million active users.

But app downloads are poor across the board. Data compiled by eMarketer (shown below), for example, indicate that the percent of US Internet users who do NOT download any apps (39.6%) is greater than the percentage of users who download FREE apps (35.7%)!

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Who are the Blackberry Boys?

Raving reviews of O&M's new look for Vodafone Blackberry users. Now Blackberry services are no longer accessible only to the top & premium segment.

All guns blazing, anyone who can afford it, please access it.

The advertisement in itself, I agree is quite clutter-breaking & different. A group of typical top management executives dance to a catchy tune of being the ‘Blackberry Boys’. Then comes in a guy in summer wear & is followed by many more facets representing the Indian youth populace.

A simple & clear communication that a Blackberry is for everyone.

I agree that the market for smart phones have opened up; & coupled with growing consumerism, many companies have started betting big & spending top money to lure the young Indian.

Nokia is the company getting hurt, their dwindling market share, especially within the smart phone segment has been led by the growth of Blackberry & other competitors.

Now that the context has been set, the question I’m raising here is Blackberry’s strategy. Especially for a high involvement product – a smart phone costing upwards of 10 grand.

The manager who is paying top rupee to purchase the phone with the most gizmos & easiest access to business usage will now have his favorite Blackberry Bold being used by one and all. 

How is Research-In-Motion (RIM) differentiating between these varied sets of target groups by launching an umbrella Blackberry campaign?

Nokia had successfully managed to do the same by having extensions for their various consumer segments & price points. But within Blackberry these distinctions do not seem to come out that strongly. 

Not to say that Blackberry needs to go the Nokia way, but just to bring about the argument that it is easy for a smart company to take Blackberry’s place in the premium segment.

I thought maybe a HTC, but their recent strategy seems to be nothing in line, it seems like all the companies need their phones to be sold to anybody & everybody who can buy them.

Maybe something as basic as Targeting needs to be relooked.

Essar to invest Rs 1,200 cr in telecom retail expansion

Essar Telecom Retail has entered into an agreement with the UK-based Virgin Group for brand licensing, technical and consultancy services for its mobile phone retail chain.

Virgin will provide its expertise in branding, customer care, store operations and staff training, and will also get royalty for use of its name.

The logo `Powered by Essar & Virgin' will accompany the store name of `The MobileStore'.

Telecom retail, it seems, is the latest buzzword in India, with Essar Telecom Retail, a unit of Essar Group, planning to increase the number of its stores from 250 at present to 2,500 by 2010. The company will invest Rs 1,200 crore over the next three years in its multi-brand telecom retail stores that operate under the brand name of MobileStore.

The company will also increase its headcount from 1,500 to 10,000 by 2010 and expects to close the fiscal with a revenue of Rs 1,000 crore. With this, it joins players like HotSpot, RPG Cellucom, Pantaloon and Subhiksha, who have announced big-ticket investments to tap the Rs 35,000-crore mobile market.

“Essar Telecom will also sell mobile phone connections, accessories, new connections and provide after sales support, repairs and other services. With these offerings, we are eyeing a 10% share in the next three years,” Essar Telecom Retail CEO Rajiv Agarwal told FE.

Currently, Essar has about 1.5% market share in the country and 4% market share in the 22 cities where it operates. In Delhi it enjoys a market share of about 8%. The company wants to focus only on telecom and related products to garner this pie and denies venturing into other retail formats.

Buoyed by sales of Rs 5 crore on August 15, the company has decided to continue with its scratch and win scheme, where its promises customers a gift worth Rs 5,000 on every purchase.

“Earlier we wanted to run the scheme only for a week, but after getting a positive response, we have decided to continue it till the competition does that,” said Agarwal. The scheme helped Essar sell 1 lakh phones in a single day.