Digital Pharma: Byte-sized roundup

The new tissue diagnostics section on Roche.com

In this week’s roundup: Roche answers cancer testing questions, Novartis uses SMS in fight against malaria, UCB goes to Facebook for epilepsy patient community, FDA gets transparent with bloggers and voting is underway in Twitter awards.

Roche has set up a nice-looking section on its corporate website that aims to answer patient questions on cancer tests and offers users the chance to rate how useful they find the pharma company's answers.

The questions featured include what will happen at an initial consultation, what a biopsy is and how long tests take.

“Patients have questions,” the company notes, adding: “Waiting for answers and test results – weeks can feel like an eternity. We help to reduce anxiety by providing diagnostic results as quickly as possible.”

Presented as a series of smooth-loading slides it ends with links to further information, including the facts and videos on the company's Health Kiosk site.

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UCB has set up a Facebook page for its US epilepsy patient community Epilepsy Advocate.

The page contains patient videos, tips and insights on epilepsy treatment, and more information on the EpilepsyAdvocate magazine.

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The FDA this week held a webinar with bloggers as part of its transparency drive and it will be available in audio form until Tuesday 19 January.

The US regulator’s FDA Basics project offers information for the general public on subjects such as how a new drug is approved and a series of short videos are planned to explain agency activities.

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Novartis has teamed up with IBM, Vodafone and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership to combat malaria in remote areas of Tanzania by using mobile phone text messages.

The mosquito-borne disease causes nearly one million deaths in Africa each year, many dying because they lack quick access to vital medication.

SMS For Life will use a combination of text messages and intuitive websites to track and managed the supply of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) drugs and quinine in Tanzania.

Healthcare staff will receive automated SMS messages prompting them to check anti-malarial stocks each week. If stocks are low staff can send a free text to a central database system hosted in the UK, which will ensure fresh deliveries are made in time.

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Voting is underway on Twitter for the second annual Shorty awards, set up to honour users of the micro-blogging platform.

The awards span 27 official categories and a number of crowd-sourced ones – click here to see the patients, patient groups and doctors currently leading the health category.

Winners will be announced in March at a ceremony in New York where acceptance speeches will, naturally, be limited to 140-characters.

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Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog. He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.