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Why isn't pharma in the App Store?
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Check out the "most popular" lists at Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch applications store, and you'll see that Health-related apps are among the top sellers. Between consumer-oriented applications and those designed for doctors and other providers, there's a vigorous variety of ways folks can harness their gadgets for health purposes.
But as Eye on FDA notes today, Big Pharma is woefully behind the times when it comes to app development. Does Pfizer have an app that reminds users to take their Lipitor, eat "good" fats, exercise daily, and so on? Does Novo Nordisk offer a carb- and calorie-tracking app for its insulin patients? Is GlaxoSmithKline using apps to help patients with depression or bipolar disorder track their moods and keep therapy journals? No, no, and no are the short answers to those questions.
The better question is, why not? The drugmaker that figures this out first could gain an--excuse us--healthy competitive edge. Customer interaction is, after all, a tried-and-true way to gain brand loyalty. "Pharmaceutical companies are light years behind, but with some innovative thought, the industry doesn't have to stay that way," Eye on FDA points out. Hear, hear.
- see the Eye on FDA post
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Comments
By hoppinglark | Posted 11:17pm | June 25, 2009
simply- Number crunchers, Lab techs, and Science geeks, Know nothing of Apple iPhones.
I'm a PharmD student and I have no clue how to program an app.
By Anonymous | Posted 11:59am | June 26, 2009
I think you've forgotten that there's more to most Pharmas than R&D - a small department called sales and marketing might already use iPhones in their hundreds in an organisation and know how to employ people to write iPhone applications - like they already do for their Flash/Java widgets for websites and indirectly for requesting developers to make changes to the back-end of their CRM and BI software. But it's not their ability to deliver - it's more getting them to believe that a concept like directly developing software for customers might work - but which product manager wants to involve the IT dept in developing a marketing strategy?? So off they will trundle to their "digitally creative" agency who will be as clueless as to how to roll out a software app to thousands of people as the people employing them.
By Gabe | Posted 1:00am | July 23, 2009
JnJ has an iphone app they are marketing with. It's essentially a news service for doctors called Blackbook
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