IMS creates Hootsuite app to help pharma manage social media compliance

IMS Health ($IMS) has created an app designed to help life science companies stay on top of social media compliance and engagement. The app integrates IMS' adverse event tracking and reporting tool AETracker into Hootsuite, a widely used social media management platform.

By converting AETracker into a Hootsuite app, IMS is attempting to make it easier for companies to comply with regulatory requirements relating to the reporting of adverse events. The app derives many of its features from AETracker--which IMS built to cut the time it takes for pharma companies to sift through unstructured social media data in search of adverse event reports--while providing a new way to view the data. Instead of going to AETracker, users of the app can view data it gathers from within Hootsuite.

In a demonstration created by IMS, adverse event reports collected by AETracker are shown in a stream alongside a Twitter ($TWTR) user's timeline and results from assorted real-time searches. IMS thinks this will make it easier to keep tabs on adverse events. "With Hootsuite's easy-to-use platform, users can achieve a higher level of social media engagement while also addressing the critical need to detect and report adverse events and other regulatory compliance risks in a timely way," Siva Nadarajah, general manager, social media at IMS, said in a statement.

For Hootsuite, the integration with AETracker could make its platform more attractive to managers of company social media accounts. With 800 of the Fortune 1000 using its platform, Hootsuite has carved out a niche serving the social media management needs of large businesses, including pharma companies. "Hootsuite is seeing significant growth in both the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and effective, compliant patient engagement is crucial to healthcare providers," Cameron Burke, director of solution partners at Hootsuite, said.

- read the statement