Opinion

*www.medi-circle.com [1] has born!* [1] http://www.medi-circle.com

www.medi-circle.com has born!

As of this week, for the first time in Belgian medical history, physicians can subscribe to an e-platform in order to facilitate communication with peers and/or to collaborate at medico-marketing projects, posted by pharmaceutical companies.This new kid on the block, www.medi-circle.com, was created by a team of experienced health care and ICT-professionals in order to find an economical and efficacious solution for the many access problems pharmaceutical companies face in their attempts to recrute medical consultants for clinical trials and medico-marketing purposes.

More and more issues hinder a solid collaboration

Pharmaceutical industry in Belgium has a very rich history regarding collaboration with health care professionals along clinical trials. Physicians recruitment for large studies has never been an issue, on the contrary, the majority of global pharmaceutical concerns has been viewing Belgium since decades as a pilot country for the study of new and innovative medication! Collaboration looked like common sense to many physicians!

On this solid base, collaboration between pharmaceutical companies and Belgian medical consultants has been extended during the 90s towards market research, post-marketing trials and medical consulting in general. Lets say Belgium just followed this global trend.

The last decennium however, companies shifted their focus in their external communication, more and more towards patient outcome what resulted in multiple patient programs, educational programs for patients and family, education and formation, but still with loyal support of local physicians.

Lately, more and more issues hinder a solid collaboration between the 2 parties. Especially pharma industry whos the principal requester for collaboration in first place, faces many difficulties in their way to maintain access to its physicians due to a fast changing environment. Just to name a few 

1. Physicians increasingly time pressure
2. Company/Representatives visit restrictions
3. Alternative information channels availability: e-mail, internet, doctors courses,
4. The majority of project meetings still happening off line, on location: too much time and effort consuming.
5. Doctors losing their trust and confidence into pharma industry due to many lawsuits lately

Pharmas ready to reinvent itself!

Pharma industry acknowledges these issues and would like to reach for a higher aim in order to secure its business models for the near future, as demonstrated in a recent survey(2009), conducted by Deloitte(Graph 1.) in which 360 senior executives out of different life science industries were questionned.

52% put clear that a more closer collaboration with patients, clinicians and academics on health outcome would be the main strategy to make their commercialization processes more efficient.

Graph 1. Which strategy does pharma industry select to secure more efficient commerzialisation processes?

www.medi-circle.com redefines collaboration between pharma industry and physicians

The many access problems pharmaceutical companies face in their attempts to recrute medical consultants for clinical trials and medico-marketing purposes were base for a team of experienced health care and ICT-professionals to find an economical and efficacious solution. www.medi-circle.com was created!

Photo: Medi-Circle Team

Limited market research in 2008 had demonstrated that a majority of physicians, specialists as well as general practitioners, was still willing to work along with pharma companies, as long as the usual way of collaboration was abandonned, meaning, project meetings on location.

Since the personal computer has become an unevitable ingredient of todays medical practice management, it was more than logic the internet would become the ultimate medium to improve collaboration between these 2 parties.

www.medi-circle.com contains Belgiums first online community for physicians, interested in medical consultancy. Medi-circle.com offers Belgian physicians for the very first time a scientific internet forum on the one hand, an e-collaboration platform together with pharma industry on the other hand.

Communication among doctors is getting a face lift as of now, through to this protected e-network. On top of that, collaboration between physicians and pharma industry at medico-marketing projects with respect to a better patient outcome is no longer restricted to off line meetings as well, but is enriched with an online platform through the internet!

Figure 1. Medi-Circles X-ray

www.medi-circle.com offers physicians a complete e-medium

Medi-circles 3 basic principles, sharing, exchanging and collaborating are concretized through following respective tools :

1. Internet forum for scientific purposes and discussions
2. New and innovative communication channel towards pharma industry
3. Online platform for collaboration at medico-marketing projects together with pharma industry

Sharing: the e-community enables physicians to share scientific needs, usefull scientific information, or best practices with peers.

Exchanging: the e-community enables those physicians, who are creators of ideas or concepts about potential medical projects, with respect to an improved patient outcome, to have an official soundboard. They will be able to share their ideas among peers, ask their colleagues for feedback and gain insights, make coalitions among peers and ask for logistic support from the Medi-Circle Team itself. Since the latter is an experienced team of health care professionals, they are well placed in search of the most appropriate business partner so that concepts could become concrete medical projects

Formerly, many good concepts were killed before they even were born because of several trivial reasons:

- Physicians were lacking an official channel towards pharma industry. The rep is just not the right person to address to for such particular type of requests

-  As a result of the above, physicians with great ideas stood mostly alone in search of a business partner, with less to no knowledge and insight about the key persons and decision makers inside pharmaceutical companies.

-  Since physicians were lacking a peers network, they missed a solid coalition to stand strong against potential sponsors in order to defend and sell their concepts

Through www.medi-circle.com each physician with a potential concept can receive the support he seeks much easier which increases significantly his or her chance for project success.

Collaborating: the e-platform enables doctors to participate at usual medico-marketing projects, as of now also online. The Medi-Circle team executes these projects(being outsourced by pharma industry) together with its medical consultants.

medi-circle.com offers pharma industry a new and innovative collaboration platform

These same basic principles, sharing, exchanging and collaborating offer pharma industry the opportunity to dispose of:

1. Internet forum for scientific purposes and discussions (access restricted to pharma doctors only)
2. New and innovative communication channel toward physicians
3. Online platform on which medico-marketing projects can be posted in the light of collaboration with physicians.

Job postings, events postings but pharma news postings are also applicable at www.medi-circle.com

Collaboration and communication between pharma industry and medical consultants: simplified for both parties!

So far only Belgian physicians , interested in medical consulting will be able to subscribe to this first Belgian e-platform for medical consultants and registration is free. Though www.medi-circle.com will be available as of 2011 for all European physicians.

One can click on www.medi-circle.com , register, with respect to security procedures, and participate to community discussions or medico-marketing projects.

As of this week, www.medi-circle.com, has redefined collaboration in Belgium, between pharma industry and medical consultants and more importantly, has opened new and exciting perspectives towards projects for the benefit of our patients lives and their families.

For any further info, please contact: info@medi-circle.com

Reference:

Graph 1: Deloitte Touch Tohmatsu & The Economist, 2009