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I was delighted to be invited to contribute to this ebook of essays edited by Ellen Hoenig Carlson, which she has kindly invited me to share with you here: I’ll be interested to find out what you think about it. That’s it for 2009 from me. I look forward to listening, learning and laughing with you in [...] - Andrew Spong

On 7th October, one of the administrators of the popular community diabetes community TuDiabetes asked: ‘Do you see a role for support staff from pump/meter companies here?‘. They went on to explain that ‘a major pump company’ had approached them and who asked if they would ‘consider allowing a non-sales oriented Clinical Manager to enter [...] - Andrew Spong

Hey! TY for bigging me up :) - Andrew Spong

From the page: "Evidence Central is an integrated web and mobile solution that helps clinicians quickly answer etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis questions using the latest evidence-based research" - Andrew Spong

Last week, my #hcsmeu co-founder and collaborator Silja Chouquet offered a great summary of some of the reasons why those who take an interest in health care in Europe must guard against modeling their own activities in 2010 along the lines of those that were undertaken at the FDA social media hearings in Washington last [...] - Andrew Spong

Take a couple of minutes to watch this: Then contemplate whether these have a future. Aside from the visual identification of drugs, Jessica Seilheimer has suggested Google Goggles could be used to identify skin infections, and be an authoritative guide to a wide range of self-diagnostic questions that have unequivocal visual signifiers. To what uses do you think [...] - Andrew Spong

Citemine is a new platform that gives us a glimpse of what peer review might look like after the publish:filter tipping point has been reached. As with any foot-tapping, clock-watching armchair punditry concerning when we can expect a revolution to occur, the launch of Citemine doesn’t offer any answers. What we can say, however, [...] - Andrew Spong

Tomorrow marks the beginning of this year’s Online Information. It is an event that I have been attending, on and off, for over a decade. I remain fascinated by what people say about this event. It has the reputation of being something of a barometer of relevance for the online information industry. However, when the metaphorical glass [...] - Andrew Spong

Throughout the last two days, I’ve been far more concerned about what patients and those seeking health information online actually find than I have been about how many invisible adverse events can dance on the head of a pin (or rather, a needle). I seldom reblog content, but this patient perspective on the second day of [...] - Andrew Spong

Qik is just about the easiest way to live stream video imaginable. Install on your G3 phone (I use Android), fire up the app, you're live. Quality is hardly HD, but what do you want from video on the fly? This product has a definite 'wow' factor - Andrew Spong

On the eve of the FDA hearings, Silja Chouquet has delivered an eloquent, passionate and well-reasoned plea in support of a raft of measures proposed by the EFPIA in the name of improving patient access to information. Pharma should be as concerned, if not more concerned, about the lack of health information available to patients and [...] - Andrew Spong

Mashable reported earlier today that Facebook now has 325 million users. Sometimes it seems that there are almost that many pharma accounts on Facebook. The problem is that none of them are official. It is hard to reconcile the hand-wringing agonies of indecision that Pharma indulges in when it comes to Twitter with its continuing disregard for verifying [...] - Andrew Spong

On November 7th 2009, the Novartis Twitter account posted a tweet addressed to another user. This was immediately followed by a further tweet to the same individual apologizing for the delay in responding. My first response was to check when the tweet to which Novartis was responding had been posted. After all, the Novartis Twitter account had [...] - Andrew Spong

One of the consequences of the ongoing migration from a cultural economy based on consumption (traditional broadcast media) to a cultural economy based on production (emerging participatory media) is a concurrent reorientation of the concept of use value. This is partly grounded in the expectation that the former will be paid for, and the latter will [...] - Andrew Spong

As I type, most of the attendees of e-Patient Connections will be asleep, apart perhaps from the jet-lagged Europeans, who will be wide awake at 2.30am. I followed the #epatcon hashtag yesterday rather more assiduously than I had intended to subsequent to my reading about Johnson & Johnson’s solicitation of user-generated content for its YouTube channel [...] - Andrew Spong

Earlier today I came upon a post on Gary Hayes‘ Personalize Media blog that did a great job of helping me to visualize the real-time growth of social media. It is very difficult for us to take a statement such as ‘Facebook has 300 million users‘ and do anything useful with it. However, a statement such [...] - Andrew Spong

The first 10 weeks of Health Care Social Media Europe’s (#hcsmeu)  existence has been characterised not only by our listening, learning, linking and frenetic debate, but also by our constant reference to  three themes that we seem to return to regardless of the discussion in  hand. The #hcsmeu community has been consistent in its strident calls [...] - Andrew Spong

There has been a considerable amount of discussion this week in the health care blog world regarding Google sidewiki, a new addition to the Google Toolbar allowing a user to ‘contribute helpful information to any web page’. Phil Baumann, Steve Woodruff, John Mack and ePharma Rx have posted thoughtful contributions, whilst the #hcsmeu, #hcsm and [...] - Andrew Spong

Whether there is an official arbiter to offer a final pronouncement, or whether there isn’t, one things appears to be true: hashtags confuse everybody. As I will be taking a professional interest in the European Association for the Study of Diabetes‘ meeting in Vienna later this month, I thought I would make some preparations. You know, [...] - Andrew Spong

For a scientific, technical or medical company looking to migrate elements of its business from a transactional to a relational model by means of the effective use of social media, there are many issues to consider and much at stake when for the right person to either lead or augment a social [...] - Andrew Spong

AstraZeneca’s Arimidex-branded Celebration Chain offers friends and family the opportunity to ‘honour special women in [their] lives who have overcome or are fighting breast cancer, and to celebrate their unique, endearing qualities’. Users begin by creating a ‘Celebration Doll’: Next, they personalize the skin tone, hair, and outfit of their doll: Finally, they select up to 4 ‘celebration [...] - Andrew Spong

"Over a year ago I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I packed up all my worldly belongings and moved to San Diego to begin working full-time for a small biotech startup." - Mr. Gunn from Bookmarklet

dito - Claudia Koltzenburg

Despite the somewhat self-congratulatory tone of the tweet that announced it (come on, folks, at this moment in time it’s ‘A’ rather than ‘THE’ “green route” to Open Access’, right ), I appreciated Ben Toth bringing a post from the ResearchGATE blog to my attention this morning. First things first: I like what ResearchGATE is [...] - Andrew Spong

Despite the somewhat self-congratulatory tone of the tweet that announced it (come on, folks, at this moment in time it’s ‘A’ rather than ‘THE’ “green route” to Open Access’, right ), I appreciated Ben Toth bringing a post from the ResearchGATE blog to my attention this morning. First things first: I like what ResearchGATE is [...] - Andrew Spong

It’s a simple concept. How complex you choose to make it is up to you. It doesn’t need to be. In the last instance, the hardest thing you will have to acknowledge is that such ‘complexities’ as you may be choosing to perceive as obstacles to change within your organizational structure are the product not of the [...] - Andrew Spong

It’s a simple concept. How complex you choose to make it is up to you. It doesn’t need to be. In the last instance, the hardest thing you will have to acknowledge is that such ‘complexities’ as you may be choosing to perceive as obstacles to change within your organizational structure are the product not of the [...] - Andrew Spong

Time flies, and it is scarcely believable that there are now only two more weeks until the inaugural #hcsmeu live tweetup, to be held on this occasion in London on September 25th. Firstly, I need to point out that I am going to be testing the social media maxim ‘it’s not about you’ to its limit [...] - Andrew Spong

Today began with two delightful surprises. Firstly, I found some great #hcsmeu statistical analysis from #hcsmeu co-founder Silja Chouquet (see, she doesn’t tell me everything ) in my RSS feed. Next, I discovered that #hcsmeu contributor Miguel Tovar had created a #hcsmeu LinkedIn group for us all, which he has generously [...] - Andrew Spong

Today began with two delightful surprises. Firstly, I found some great #hcsmeu statistical analysis from #hcsmeu co-founder Silja Chouquet (see, she doesn’t tell me everything ) in my RSS feed. Next, I discovered that #hcsmeu contributor Miguel Tovar had created a #hcsmeu LinkedIn group for us all, which he has generously [...] - Andrew Spong

Peter Kim recently took the opportunity of welcoming newly-acquired social business consultancy Headshift to the Dachis Group (itself ‘created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises’) to restate of the foundations of social business design as they perceive it: business partner organization, workforce collaboration, customer participation. As David Cushman remarks in [...] - Andrew Spong

Peter Kim recently took the opportunity of welcoming newly-acquired social business consultancy Headshift to the Dachis Group (itself ‘created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises’) to restate of the foundations of social business design as they perceive it: business partner organization, workforce collaboration, customer participation. As David Cushman remarks in [...] - Andrew Spong

I enjoyed this. I've been meaning to get a feed of DKSH for a while. As an aside: what the rest of the world doesn't realize is how much Brits love it when interlocutors take it upon themselves to mock their accents, because they do it so badly. :) - Andrew Spong

Find out how many of your followers are junk and block - Neil Saunders

very nice tool - Nicolas Bertrand

I was inspired to compose this post having reviewed the stunning Pharma Twitterama, Shwen Gwee’s comprehensive introduction to the effective tactical use of everybody’s favourite status updating platform, and a recent post about how to manage Twitter by Chris Brogan. Spend half an hour reviewing the above, and you’ll know just about everything you need in [...] - Andrew Spong