Hello from Berlin again!
Truly one of the highlights of the entire two day ExL 2nd Annual Digital Pharma Europe conference was a presentation by Dr. Bertalan Mesko from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center who is the author of Scienceroll.com and the founder and CEO of Webicina.com.
What made the presentation so compelling? Well… everything. He is young, brilliant and had on a swell suit. The breadth of material he covered was breathtaking and too much for me to repeat in this small space, nor could I do it justice. But the depth was also astounding. And lastly, he is not a theorist, though he is that too. But he also is highly engaged in executing the vision that he has in a large number of projects that integrate e-tools in general, and social media in particular to improve the practice of medicine.
Where to start with Berci? There was so much of value.
- WDPW? What do physicians want, he asks, from the pharmaceutical industry? They want education and open, transparent interactions and that social media is the bridge between the pharmaceutical industry and Web-smart physicians.
- He provided examples of experience in using real time collaboration to produce better results more quickly, including writing a medical paper with 5000 edits from colleagues in a breathtakingly short period of time. Imagine, he says, what it would have taken to sort through 5000 emails with suggested changes.
- He is a Twitter-enthusiast and related a brilliant example of help in a diagnosis with the use of Twitter (see the video attached)
- Another example he provided was the use of real-time collaboration through the use of tools such as Second Life and
- He advocates that pharma companies shift their concentration from matters of return on investment (ROI) to the return on connections (ROC) that can be reaped as a matter of fact from the increased presence in social media of medicine. In other words, focus less on the cost and more on the value (which, by the way, happens to be the mantra of the pharmaceutical industry regarding the pricing of medicines – it isn't based on cost, it is based on value).
If you are interested in the future of medicine, there are few better places you could look than Berci's blog and/or by following him on Twitter. And, meet him in the video below and if you can't view it here, please check it out on the EyeonFDA YouTube channel. Berci is one of the most interesting people I have met in a long time. And he gave a presentation that was universally well-received at the conference.
