iBooks Author allows your brand to develop dynamic e-books for distribution on the iBooks Store (Apple’s digital bookstore).

Using Complemedia technology, you can now combine video, audio and other visual aids with iBooks to distribute digital medical content.

Example uses:

• Continuing Medical Education
• Sales Force Detail Aid
• Thought Leader Programs
• Patient Education
• Medical guidelines and pocket guides

Additionally, your continuing education brand can even distribute quiz and assessment questions directly from in an iBook.

Apple has specific requirements regarding iBook distribution.  Only specific content may be distributed through the iBook store. However, Apple – with restrictions – will allow distribution outside the iBook store (please contact us for more information).

Although this announcement has not received much attention, we at Complemedia believe this to be a powerful method to distribute your content.

DetailApp Video Demo

Key benefits include:

• Facilitates easy access to marketing assets for your sales representatives
• Secure distribution of materials (password protected)
• Reinforce key messages with targeted electronic “leave behinds”
• Reporting on asset usage to sales managers and marketing
• Fully customizable

Features Include:

We are excited to launch the beta of our new dashboard app platform. The dashboard app platform combines several technologies to create a turn-key medical or health app based on your brand’s own content and publicly available content in just a few weeks.

Apple’s new app store rules prohibit apps that simply open up web-pages and/or apps that do not fully utilize iOS capabilities. However, Complemedia’s dashboard app platform allows use to utilize publicly available information and your own brand’s content in so that the experience feels extremely innovative and “app-like”.  (If you have a HealthDay news license, you can even add the feed to the app “out of the box”.)

For example, some circumstances where your brand would want to utilize Complemedia’s dashboard app platform:

• Distributing medical guidelines along with specialty-focused news
• A clinical trial recruitment/udpate app based on a specific therapeutic area
• A continuing medical education app focused on a specific therapeutic area
• A corporate news app for a pharmaceutical company, biotechnology company, device company, etc.
• An app featuring content related to a new product launch in a therapeutic area
• An app highlighting patient and healthcare professional thought leaders
• An app to communicate with your medical sales force the newest company, clinical and industry news

How the dashboard app works:

1. Identify the content areas of interest (e.g., therapeutic area, specialty, etc.)
2. Identify relevant topics associated with the content
3. Add a custom tab with your own proprietary content (e.g., product information, continuing eduction, etc.)
4. Test and submit app
5. Monitor to insure content is optimized (app will automatically update with new content)

Please contact us for more information and/or a demo.

At this point in the smart-phone lifecycle, it is becoming standard to utilize an app as a distribution channel for any campaign. That being said, here are few additional tactical reasons to support an app project:

1. You would like to highlight a specific category or product associated with your brand: An app can be a great way to make it easier for your customers to interact with targeted content or a specific product category.  For example, an oncology brand with a new indication can develop an app based on new clinical trial data, product usage, etc.   Or, a Cardiology focused medical communications company can develop an app based on a specific therapeutic area such as Chronic Heart Failure, increasing the number of cardiologists who “raise their hand” in the app store.
2. Your customers have a problem that you can help solve with an App (“build an app for that”): Perhaps there is a medical calculator or set of guidelines absent or executed poorly in the app store.  Your brand can fulfill this need.
3. Your competitors do not yet have an app: Your customers are likely searching the app store to interact with your product-category.  If your competitors do not have an app yet, this is an opportunity for your brand.  In this case, your barrier to entry is lower.  The minimum required is to build an app which extends basic functionality of your web-site while utilizing an innovative user interface in the app itself.
4. You want to improve communications with your customers: An app can be an extremely effective CRM tool, especially if you use push notifications and target content effectively.  For example, create an app to keep high value customers (e.g., thought leaders) abreast on category and product news.
5. Just to do good (and good PR): There may be an app idea for your market which will not yield significant downloads or monetary benefit, but will help your patient and/or healthcare professional customer base.  For example, an app which assists patients in finding support networks or a patient education app based on a targeted disease state.

These are just a few tactical reasons to build an app.  One thing to keep in mind is that the app store is ever-changing and speedy execution is important before the market conditions change.

Typically, we in health marketing think of the holidays as a time to prepare for next year. It may be a time to solidify next year’s marketing plans or make valuable investments for next year.

However, the holidays (including November, December and January) have a different meaning when you consider the “app store” as a unique channel in your marketing mix.

The holiday season is Apple’s highest volume time period.

Healthcare professionals receive iPads, iPhones other smart-phones for the holidays.

Practically speaking, users are more likely to seek new apps when they first purchase a new device.

Healthcare professionals browse the app store to seek apps that might contribute to their practice. They review “new releases” and even type in relevant key words into the iTunes App Store search box, such as “Cardiology”, “Oncology”, etc.).

Where will your brand be in the app store?

And one more reason:

Additionally, Apple typically reserves about a week every December where they do not allow any new apps in the app store. Last year, this closure came from Dec. 23 to Dec. 28.

What does this mean for your brand? If you are able to submit your app before this period, your app will display in new releases for longer than usual. In other words, it will appear at the top of new releases for an extended period of time because it will have less competition during this “black out period”.

An innovator in the mobile space, Complemedia has been developing medical apps for the top brands in healthcare since the iTunes App Store launched in 2008. Contact Complemedia today to learn more about our medical app platform and developer services.

Interestingly, Apple featured the “WebMD” consumer app as part of this promotion. Although the WebMD app can certainly be used by healthcare professionals, the content of this app is targeted towards consumers.

Since both Medscape and WebMD were featured by Apple, one wonders whether this was a calculated choice by Apple or just a small blunder. However, certainly out of the thousands of medical apps in the app store, there were others which deserved the spotlight over a well known consumer app such as WebMD.

Getting featured by Apple can be the single biggest driver in downloads. Some of Complemedia’s own clients have been featured by Apple– it can drive downloads 10 times the current trend or even higher.

By creating a medical category, Apple has helped drive the adoption of medical apps by healthcare professionals, industry and other medical organizations. As the app store continues to grow exponentially (in both downloads and in quantity of apps), hopefully Apple will feature medical apps even more frequently.

Apple features WebMD, a consumer app, on a healthcare professional promotion

With well over 100,000 downloads for our clients and access to proprietary data, Complemedia can assist you with your mobile health and medical strategy. Engaging with us prior to app development can help focus your app development efforts, leading to improved performance and potential efficiencies.

Questions to consider when developing an app strategy:

• What are the market opportunities for an app for my health brand?
• What is the target market for an app?
• How will my brand promote the app?
• Should my brand develop a single app or a series of niche apps?
• Can my brand monetize an app? If so, how?
• How will we measure success?
• How will the different platforms affect app development/functionality (e.g., Apple rules and regulations)
• What future functionality should I plan for in the app? How will I manage the app lifecycle?

Consulting and strategy engagement range from $5,000 to $20,000 (internal ideation, planning, final report, etc.). Please contact us for more information and a free 1 hour initial strategy session.

Complemedia has been featured in “The Power Of Real-Time Social Media Marketing”, a new book published by McGraw-Hill.  It’s a fantastic resource for understanding how and why you should be implementing social media into your business marketing strategy.  You can buy the book on Amazon.

A brief excerpt:

Reviews:

“A must read for media and marketers.’ ‘Alan Cohen, CEO, OMD USA
“What do fish tacos, data storage, and disaster relief all have in common? Each has harnessed the power of marketing that amplifies via the real-time social web. These and many other case studies are part of this engaging new book that details strategies for marketers to understand, evolve, and profit in the social age.” ‘John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer, Young & Rubicam, and coauthor of Spend Shift

“Understanding what’s possible and how to use social media will be essential for every marketer; this book will hold your hand in this brave new world.” ‘John Miller, CMO, NBC Universal TV Group

“Like it or not, social media is here to stay. It needs to be understood, managed, and harnessed. This book tells you how. Read it!” ‘Zhihang Chi, Ph.D., Vice President and General Manager, North America, Air China Limited

“Beverly Macy is a true innovator and thought leader in the field of social media marketing.” ‘Cathy Sandeen, Ph.D., MBA, Dean, UCLA Extension, University of California Los Angeles

Together, HealthDay and Complemedia’s MedicinePhone platform will provide clients in a variety of health fields the opportunity to develop their own branded smart phone applications, which can target specific information and news to medical and health professionals.

“The MedicinePhone platform is helping us expand our health and medical news distribution to wireless platforms and at the same time we will be able to help our customers reach new audiences,” said Dan McKillen, HealthDay CEO. “This is a good opportunity to take advantage of the explosive growth in smart phones as a productivity tool.”

The content can be customized to a client’s specific needs, McKillen said, from the latest medical journal updates that a physician will find useful, to the latest news about specific diseases and conditions of interest to the consumer.

Why use smart phones as the delivery device? A recent survey reported in the online edition of Money found that six-of-ten physicians preferred iPhones and almost all health administrators preferred the Blackberry.

In the future, health professionals could increasingly be using smart phones “for a wide variety of tasks, including tracking patients, ordering lab tests, viewing X-rays and CAT scans, making clinical decisions and ‘e-prescribing’ drugs,” the article said.

In addition, according to a recent Manhattan Research report, Physicians in 2012: The Outlook for On Demand, Mobile, and Social Digital Media, eighty-one percent of physicians will own smart phones by 2012.

One of MedicinePhone and HealthDay’s latest client is Pri-Med, a Massachusetts-based company with a Web-based health/medical platform offering interactive services for leading medical institutions and healthcare professionals. The Pri-Med iPhone App is available in the App Store now and in addition to news for Primary Care professionals, provides users with access to CME programs and the ability to register for live meetings.