Pharmaceutical firms use social media to educate, market, listen to and connect with customers, patients and physicians. Some approaches include: - 1. Education- Firm offers disease specific educational aimed at consumers. Its aim is to help patients to understand their disease, so that they may engage with their healthcare providers to improve outcomes.
2. Connecting with customers/patients and physicians - The industry can use social media to create patient support groups and communities.
To know more, follow: http://www.toprankblog.com/2011/01/social-media-marketing-pharma/

Big data has a vital application in healthcare industry. Social media will increase communication between providers, patients and communities. This will not only work to globalize and democratize healthcare, but it is also a potentially important source of big data.  It will impact how these players engage with the healthcare ecosystem, especially when globalization, external data, regionalization, mobility and social networking are involved. The problem in healthcare isn't the lack of data but the lack of information that can be used to support decision-making, planning and strategy. In healthcare, big data challenges are compounded by the fragmentation and dispersion of data among the various stakeholders, including payers, data vendors, standards organizations, providers, labs, ancillary vendors, financial institutions and regulatory agencies. The entire healthcare system can realize benefits from democratizing big data access. Big data can make decision support simpler, faster and ultimately more accurate because rational decisions are based on higher volumes of data that are more current and relevant. Read more at:

It is found that big data and healthcare analytics help patients to stick to their treatment plans following doctor's orders. According to a New England Journal of medicine report, despite having treatable ailments, about 125,000 people die in United States every year just because they don't take their medication properly advised by the doctors. According to a doctor, to overcome the problems, they needed to identify the gaps in scores and ratings which includes Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information set (HEDIS), Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems (CAHPS) etc. As non-compliance hurts healthcare provider's goal of improving care and reducing costs, many organizations are handling the matter by growing their insights built from big data and analytics to deploy human resources like managers and social workers in better ways. Medicare, Medicaid, dual-eligible, and commercial plan members on care management strategies incorporate technologies such as big data, analytics and integration to improve health outcomes, enhance satisfaction and compliance, also increases income and lower cost. For populations who often have chronic conditions and don't want to comply with doctor's orders because of homelessness, financial instability, joblessness and emotional issues, one can use big data to solve the problem in a logistic-driven way to help those patients comply on their care plan. Read more at: http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/analytics/analytics-help-patients-follow-doctors-orders/d/d-id/1278717