By Lynda Bauer

"You probably don't want to view this before eating"
Ken Director of External Communications, Pfizer

With one sensational clip Ray Kerins demonstrated just how far, the pharmaceutical industry has moved into social media. Whether you agree with the company message, there's no denying the power of video to set a new tone and make an impact. Add to that the ease of pass along and a new pace to public health education is set. Only a year ago, Ken was fighting the company's internal employee block to Facebook, today Pfizer's fan page is in the top 1% of fan page views.

Largely communications professionals serving the healthcare industry, attendees to the BDI event at NYU Graduate Center last week soaked up case studies from industry leaders deploying new social tools. Following the on-stage presentations, they participated in two of more than 25 roundtable topics including Getting Physicians to Connect and Engage Online with VeoMed Editor-in-Chief Marc Straus and Strategic Community Management and Moderation of Online Social Venues Moderated by: Jenna Woodul, Chief Community Officer, LiveWorld. Throughout the table conversations one could repeatedly hear frustrations common to implementing change ie. "They wouldn't even agree to a 24 hour news cycle turn around." Despite the escalating adopters, social still has its resisters in this sector burdened with heavy regulations and liability issues.

Credentials appear to be the universal solvent to resistance. Impressive achievements have been made by professionals with multiple layers of industry depth combining experience in creative web design, community building, international relief experience, technology, business, medical publishing and law. Louise Clemens, VP Business Development is a case in point. Louise currently focuses on providing online community solutions to Health and Life Science institutions.

"First mover advantage is big with KOLs, as is accessibility, mobile is key"
Louise Clements, Within3

Louise stepped the audience through research on channels to reach different health providers, physicians and other medical professionals - key opinion leaders (KOLs). With billable time fully allocated, mobile is mandatory if you are hoping for comments to community blogs.

Rebecca Goberstein, Associate Marketing Mgr of LifeScan, Inc. is responsible for the Johnson & Johnson's Institute brand, a global initiative for J&J to transform diabetes care through education. She and Jenna Woodhul, Chief Community Officer for LiveWorld's community management and moderation teams shared the implementation process for their Dosie award-winning community.

"We began with blogging 101 which KOLs could relate to writing articles. First, we enlisted internal contributors; when they saw the attention it got,
the external experts followed"

In considering how to contribute to communities in meaningful way, Marc Monseau, JJ Director of Communication who serves on BDI's board, noted the importance of "the human face" and passed along a reminder he'd be given once "you can't copy approve a conversation". Its a good thing to because some of the audience targeted non-stop teen conversations.

"There's no faster connecting that two teens, their preferred destination, YouTube with 70% of the audiance"

When Tim Weinheimer, Vice President of Ketchm researched the social destinations of teens on behalf of his client CooperVision, it was YouTube hands down. In looking at the video, it was all about sports and so began their strategy for mycontactsport.com to build a sports community for teens that leveraged their strong network of eyecare professionls for a fuller customer facing image.

"An outbreak of sores on the arm is tricky when the Avatars don't have arms!"
Ann Aikin, Health Communications Specialist, Center for Disease Control

Especially engaging was the COD creative work presented by Ann Aikin. Their Whyville targeted to tweens (ages 9-12) took on flu education during the twin-headed flu season last winter. With "Why" and "Why-me" flu outbreaks in Whyville, there was standing room only for avatars. When the outbreak of symptoms included spots on the arms, last minute adjustments for armless avatars had to be created .

Though a small sophisticated segment of COD's audience, Aikin explained how COD is able to participate in some activities for the advancement of technology. I look forward to what next year's conference will bring from impact of mobile video on physician engagement but perhaps more so from Whoville tweens who share faster than even two strands of flu!

On May 18th-19th IBM will be hosting a 24hour CEO Study Webcast and Open House in the Analytics Virtual Center to mark the launch of the Global CEO Study 2010

Host Albert Morales and guests Peter Korsten, Saul Berman, Dave Lubowe and other IBM leaders will join from around the world. We are inviting the public to a day-long webcast viewing in the Analytics Virtual Center, - we'd like to make the environment a space where people can stop by, meet, watch the CEO study webcast, and discuss the issues it raises.

Post questions, reactions to Twitter: #smarterleaders, via Tunmblr http://smarterleaders.tumblr.com/ask or in the Livestream chat

Disclosure: In addition to managing editor of ipTVe, I am also member of the IBM team producing this event