This particular site is just one of many launched to respond to the many personal mental health challenges that have arisen from the terrorist atrocities.
This isn’t at all surprising. The number of non-professional medical content services on the Web has soared recently. Physicians cite this growth as the single most important causative factor in their changing relationships with their patients.
The Internet is increasingly becoming the most valuable resource for patients and healthcare consumers in their quest for knowledge on personal health issues. Healthcare surfers are voting with their feet. The number of hits medical content sites receive dwarfs those that pharmaceutical corporate sites achieve. Patients and consumers don’t want to be bombarded with constant adverts. The rules of other media are different from those in the virtual world. The online audience wants to be a part of the medium, they want information and education.
Over 60% of households in the US are online according to a recent Datamonitor survey. In Europe the figure is slightly lower. Datamonitor predicts that 43% of European households wiil be capable of ‘logging on’ by 2004. This represents a potentially massive audience for companies to target.
Pharmaceutical firms must embrace this audience. But they must seek their trust and endeavor to build long-term relationships. Moreover, they must strive to make the relationship as personal as possible, by using interactive technologies. This cannot be achieved by marketing strategies designed for other media. Rather, by forging alliances and sponsorship agreements with the providers of online medical content services, pharma companies can be seen to be objective and trustworthy.
Only with such a sensitive and subtle approach can pharmaceutical companies hope to reap the full rewards the Internet can undoubtedly bring. This sensitivity is particularly important in the wake of the events of September 11.
