How Uncertainty & Distrust Damage Relationships with Patients

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Ian Baer, Founder & CEO of Sooth, explores the growing distrust and uncertainty surrounding social media and its impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Key contributors to this distrust include the spread of misinformation, the rise of AI-generated content, and the politicization of social media platforms. The conversation highlights the challenges faced by pharma companies in building trust with patients in this environment, including the need to combat misinformation and navigate the complexities of social media platforms.

He emphasizes the importance of building partnerships with trusted voices, such as medical influencers and patient communities, to effectively communicate with patients. It also underscores the need for transparency and authenticity in pharma's social media presence, including acknowledging and addressing patient concerns and responding to negative feedback.

The conversation concludes with a discussion on the evolving role of social media in healthcare and the potential for private communities and personalized sharing to play a greater role in the future.

How does an uncertainty of where to find information, coupled with distrust in social media, damage the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the patients they serve?

Look, the healthcare industry has had a trust gap to close with most individuals in the US for years now, right? It's been growing, distrust in the institutions. Now, suddenly, there's distrust in certain areas of science. I think the no matter how you felt about the COVID pandemic and the way it was treated, you probably came out of that three-year period with a different point of view on how much you should trust any healthcare information that's put out there in social media. Certainly, you don't take anything at face value.

The [EMA’s] decision to pull out of Twitter [X], well, that's happening in a lot of places, because Twitter [X] has gone both more partisan than it has been in the past but also has backed off of a lot of fact checking. Meta has recent announced that they are going to adopt Twitter's [X’s] methods when it comes to fact checking. I think we'll call into question, similarly, the validity of that platform. Bluesky just doesn't have the adoption rate.

One of the big movements that we are expecting to see will be around private sharing of content. One to one sharing. Which it's funny, somebody nicknamed it “dark social” like 10 years ago. The result is everyone says, ‘Oh, that sounds creepy. That sounds like the dark web.” No one ever wants to talk about it, but all dark social refers to is one to one content sharing. It's dark because it's not tracked through any of the analytic platforms. Whether it's Google Analytics or the Meta package, or whatever the case may be, but there's going to be a lot more opportunity, especially because of that trust factor I mentioned earlier. Almost 70% of people say, ‘I trust information more if it comes from someone I know’, even if I only know that person as a social media influencer than if it comes directly from a company.

So, I would look for a lot more content partnerships where the individual putting their mark or their endorsement or simply forwarding or posting a piece of information may have that that bit of endorse. Trust that makes the recipient more comfortable with the information they're getting. But, I mean, how funky is that? That, ‘I need my aunt to tell me this is true, because I don't trust Pfizer or J&J.’ It's a very odd time.