In August 2011 pharmaceutical firms will be forced to address the issue of community moderation. Effective August 15, Facebook will require that unmoderated comments be allowed on all company pages, including those maintained by pharmaceutical firms. Some predict pharmaceutical firms will abandon Facebook; however, there are signs that others will stay. Janssen already allows patient comments without pre-screening on its Psoriasis 360 Facebook page. In July 2011, at the Social Communications & Healthcare Conference in New York, Ray Kerins, VP, Worldwide Communications for Pfizer, commented that Pfizer is planning to maintain its Facebook presence and has developed a plan to deal with the new Facebook policies. While the August 2011 deadline only pertains to Facebook, it will certainly shape the industry’s use of all social platforms.
In part three of this series I’ll consider the role of the federal government in driving social media use in health care.