Opinion

Its been almost a week since the FDA hearings on social media wrapped up. If you missed it, then you missed a bit of history. Well, you sort of missed a bit of history. Its not the fall of the Berlin Wall or anything, but its pretty rare that the FDA has a hearing like this. Im not going to begin to try to give you all the links you need to review what happened and instead Im going to point you to the source for the latest and greatest on all things FDA social media, the #FDASM site created by Fabio Gratton. Thats where you can get links to all the presentations, the Twitter feed of the #FDASM hashtag, downloadable copies of many of the presentations, and a lot more.

Okay, so my take

As you know, I did have the privilege of speaking twice at this meeting (you can get copies of my presentations here), but I also got to listen to the 60+ other speakers. I had some preconceptions of what Id hear at the meeting and many of these were right on, but I also was surprised by a few things and learned a few more. At the same time, I didnt hear the answers to a few things that have been nagging me.

Today Im speaking at a Business Development Institute conference about my experience. My talk title is: Three Things I Learned at the FDA Social Media Hearings and Three I Wish I Had.

Not the shortest title Ive ever used, but its descriptive.

I wont recap the entire presentation here, but see below for a link to download my presentation, which includes my speaking notes and see for yourself. For those of you who were/are at the conference today, thanks for stopping by.

In summary, here are the three things I learned:

• The FDA gets it
• MedWatch is dead (a serious AE, BTW)
• Consumers might actually want us there

And, the things I didnt learn (but wish I had):

• FDAs plan for keeping up
• The end of red herrings
• What pharma REALLY wants to do

As usual, my topic headlines dont make much sense on there own, so Id invite you to download a copy of my presentation and read along with the speakers notes for more detail. Ill be writing about a few of these topics in future posts, so more detail will be forthcoming. In the meantime, for my initial thoughts on the FDA hearings, feel free to download a copy of my POWERPoint here:

Three Things I Learned at the FDA Social Media Hearings and Three I Wish I Had (253 downloads)

Jonathan is Director of Business Development for Bridge Worldwide, a leading digital and relationship marketing agency, and regularly writes about pharma marketing on his blog Dose of Digital. Feel free to send him a tweet to @jonmrich.