2020 constitutes an excellent year for revisiting core
strategies, goals, and efficacy in healthcare marketing. Early stage healthcare
companies may focus on building strategies to increase their brand awareness.
Whereas, the well-established companies may prioritize the lead generation and
sales-focused activities, such as email marketing or social advertising. Customer-centric
marketing activities would be a priority in the upcoming year. So, knowing the
costumers and understanding their needs should be the main vision of healthcare
marketers.
Source: O’Dwyer’s –
The Inside News of PR and Marketing Communications
Social media and
mobile health apps are an innovative way to improve communication between community
pharmacists and public.
Crilly and team has conducted a study to evaluate the
perception of community pharmacists (CPs) with regards to the use of social
media and mobile health apps in pharmacy public health services.
This was a mixed-method study that involved a
cross-sectional survey and follow-up interviews. The study included 257 CPs
working in community pharmacies. The survey covered the role of CPs in public
health; use of social media; use of mobile health apps by CPs; demographic
information. After the survey the participants who were interested to continue
the study were invited to participate in the semi-structured interview. After
the ethical approval responses were collected on paper or on online. About 257
responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Twenty-five respondents
showed interest in follow-up interviews. Using framework methodology the
interviews were transcribed and analyzed.
The study response rate was 43%. The participants who
completed the survey were mostly under the age of 35 years. Regardless of the
demographics, about half of the respondents conducted at least one public
health awareness campaign. Face-to-face interview, telephone call, and E-mail
were the commonly used tools to interact with the patients participated in the
health awareness campaign.
Most of the CPs have promoted the use of social media pages
and mobile health apps if maintained by a healthcare professionals (HCPs). Cps
under the age of 35 years were more positive about the use of social media
tools and mobile health apps in health promotion.
The study concluded that most of the CPs were positive about
the use of social media and mobile health apps in health promotion. However,
training pharmacy team regarding the usage of these tools is must.
Additionally, awareness of evidence-based apps will increase the adoption of social
media tools.
Reference:
Crilly P, Hassanali W, Khanna G, Matharu K, Patel D, Patel D,
Rahman F,Kayyali R. Community pharmacist perceptions of their role and the use
of socialmedia and mobile health applications as tools in public health. Res
Social AdmPharm. 2019 Jan;15(1):23-30.
