EPG Health has a new report coming in November on how pharma and HCPs communicate. The study is based on 291 global HCPs from all regions and 134 pharma participants from 50 companies, also global. There are also 109 participants from service provider companies.

This 73-page report has both qual and quant results and spans six large topic areas:

An interesting finding contradicts a recent DHC report from earlier this month that found LinkedIn the top "pure" social network for US-based HCPs. This global report shows Facebook firmly in the top spot, again with YouTube technically at the top but not really considered a true social network.

Looking at weekly or more often we find Facebook at 54% and LinkedIn at 48%. A good race to be sure and likely resulting from a more global Facebook audience.

Looking at where marketers are focusing we see a distinct difference with LinkedIn far ahead of Facebook. This is primarily because of the corporate accounts but the US-only branded pages will also have something to do with it. 

So this is how we get 54% HCPs to 11% marketers. There is a lot of room for pharma marketers to grow on public social platforms to match the ever-growing usage by HCPs. 

Fun fact, the Klick Social Strategy team knows of 59 different branded LinkedIn pages. Call your Klick rep if you want the list (promotional, but valuable so I'll allow it -Ed.).

HCPs compete on knowledge and it shows with the number one incentive driving HCP willingness to share data being knowledge tests.

So far, this report has been sent to EPG Health clients and the folks who participated in the survey but it will be released to the rest of us in November. Use the link in this story to sign up to get a copy when it comes out. 

A new study from Klick Labs was published in the Mayo Clinic journal with the title Acoustic Analysis and Prediction of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Using Smartphone-Recorded Voice Segments. 

The researchers found that they could detect type 2 diabetes in a patient using only voice, a smartphone, and some AI processing.

With a successful detection rate of 89% for women and 86% for men the system is comparable to existing standard tests for diabetes and is obviously easier, and cheaper, to execute. You can hear directly from Kaufman on our press release site:

Wire readers may already have seen this story in the news as it's getting global attention.

Pew Research has a new report out on Americans' views on data privacy and it's rough. 81% don't trust companies to handle their data in a way they would agree with and the same number expect the same of AI.

We're going to focus on passwords here because everyone can identify with these findings.

Respondents said they feel overwhelmed by the number of passwords they need to track online. And, the number isn't that different from the youngest to the oldest.

For many Americans the answer to the overwhelming number of passwords is to write them down. This isn't as bad for home users as it opens up a small attack vector, the home desk, but allows the person to use much more secure passwords (still, don't do it -Ed.).

When asked if memorable or secure was more important we see the inverse of the "write it down" results.

Still, the split is pretty even. Check out the full story for more insights on how Americans look at data usage by companies. Spoiler, they're not keen on it.

A new report from Sendbird is based on a survey of 1,200 consumers in 14 countries and looks at their communications preferences with companies. They highlight the importance of using the right channels for the audience as respondents said they were more likely to:

When asked how they wanted companies to communicate with them, consumers were still email-first.

When asked if they do not trust mobile text / SMS for different industries, healthcare was top on this no-go list.

When asked what channels they did want to use to communicate with healthcare companies, respondents put the telephone first.

Often, when consumers tell us what channels they prefer they are choosing the ones that are easiest to ignore. This seems to be a small effect though as there are only nine percentage points between the top and bottom most ignored channels. For what it's worth, phone tops the list.

Other than triggering my internal editor (that's me -Ed.) with a misuse of the word "shear," calling private message tools "public messengers," and a few misspellings, it's a good report. The point about preferred channels is important for health marketers.

Americans are worried about retirement and the top concern is health, followed closely by financials. Often these two topics overlap.

Only 23% of Americans 50+ who are working have a written retirement plan. If your market is older patients, this report gives some insights into their retirement hopes and fears.

Threads launched in July... the first month of Q3. This propelled it to the top spot in app downloads. 

When mapped out per month, the downloads look like this:

When looking at regions, Threads was the top download by far:

So far there is no reliable data on how much the app is being used so the jury, so to speak, is still out.

A new report from Thought Industries looks at the state of corporate client training programs for global firms, 82% of these with over $100 million in revenue. Software and a B2B focus were the largest cohort.

Some takeaways from the report:

When it comes to priorities for their external learning programs, there were large changes from 2022 to 2023.

The report is worth a look for anyone interested in external-facing education which HCPs often ask for. Also, the company name is epic (don't editorialize -Ed.).

Clarivate has a new report that looks at seven companies to watch in the AI drug discovery space. If that's your gig then definitely grab a copy (not so familiar with the audience -Ed.).

If, however, you're looking for more of an overview of how AI and ML are affecting clinical trials here are four charts from the report.

TikTok is a rocket ship when it comes to social commerce... but the whole industry is accelerating so the platform has its work cut out for it.

For Rx pharma this isn't immediately relevant but it does show how social users are getting more comfortable with transactions that at least start on the platforms. 

College Station, TX is getting the first pilot* of the Amazon Air drone delivery service for prescription medications.

The video on the Amazon page is interesting to see the drone that can translate from vertical hover to wing-assisted flight which saves energy. The video also talks about reducing processes to three minutes from a couple of hours, which shines a spotlight on the local pharmacy that wants you to shop for 30 minutes while they get your prescription ready (be nice, they're following procedure -Ed.).

From Fierce Healthcare:

* Yes, that's a dad joke about pilotless drones. 

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has released a new AI video editing tool for business called CapCut. The linked story includes some example videos but from these samples it does look like standard AI material. 

Even so, it's probably worth a look for marketers who want to stay on top of quick content creation technologies.

The media frenzy from US Thanksgiving to Christmas / holidays / Festivus is a big time for consumer product advertisers. For this season TikTok has announced "Hashtag Audiences" which are bundles of accounts more likely to be interested in different products.

The platform is looking to really cash in on the interest from large advertisers, these programs aren't for the small mom-and-pop shops.

It seems TikTok is entering this holiday season in a position of strength and eMarketer certainly thinks the platform has a lot of growth left in it.