It was great to have Brad Perriello, executive editor and Brian Johnson, publisher of MassDevice.com out to our offices in Waltham to speak to our Healthcare PR Practice Team. As they put it, MassDevice.com is “telling the story of innovation from a business perspective” —with a comprehensive news site that gets more than 35,000 visitors monthly.
Don’t be misled by the name, MassDevice.com is not just about Massachusetts-based medical device companies, although it’s a great source of comprehensive information on the large and small medical device companies across the New England region. MassDevice.com is also reporting on all the news and events that impact the medtech industry, from the FDA’s review of the 510K process to healthcare reform to Medicare and more. Their medtech index, presented every Monday in a weekly check up, looks at the medtech industry in Massachusetts as well as Minnesota and California, two other medtech hotbeds. With a goal of becoming the premier business intelligence source for the medical device industry, they define med device to include device, diagnostics, HCIT, mobile/wireless, EMRs and lab tools.
Here are Brian and Brad discussing their new site and the top trends they are following: 
Tags:
healthcare PR,
medical device PR
Posted by Helen Shik on June 30, 2010 at 2:39 PM
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) is now on Twitter.
According to the FDA website, the goal for getting on Twitter is to reach regulated industry, health professionals, and others interested in the business of the center in a way convenient to them. With two handles, @FDAcdrhIndustry and @FDADeviceInfo, the FDA will be using Twitter to get out the word about product recalls, approvals, upcoming meetings and the many tools available to help users comply with regulations.
Most interesting is the FDA's acknowledgement that they're on Twitter to make things convenient for their audience. Yes! While some in the medical device industry have been hesitant to embrace social media, ironically due to regulatory concerns, FDA's move to Twitter is further confirmation that social media tools are an accepted and effective communications tool for the device industry.
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FDA,
healthcare PR,
medical device PR,
Twitter
Posted by Laura Kempke on May 17, 2010 at 12:04 PM
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As PRWeek reports, public relations can be a cost-effective, powerful and efficient way to recruit patients for a clinical trial. That’s what EnteroMedics found when they hired us for a 7-month project to help accelerate patient recruitment for its EMPOWER Study. EnteroMedics makes an implantable device that delivers VBLOC Therapy to treat obesity.
The company needed to enroll up to 300 patients by August. Beginning in January, our team executed a PR campaign targeted at national media and the 13 U.S. markets with clinical sites. As a result of the PR efforts alone, more than 2000 patients were screened and of those, 9% or 190 were prequalified for the study. The news stories on the study, both on the national and local level significantly boosted awareness and helped to drive inquiries into the website and the call center. For instance, after a front page story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, web hits increased 350% and after a segment on Good Morning America traffic to the site increased 600%.
We’ve been doing this type of work for some time for clients. In fact, one of the first clinical trial recruitment campaigns we executed was for Gynecare (now Ethicon/J&J) for its uterine balloon therapy for menorrhagia. For that campaign, a segment on GMA with the lead clinical investigator stimulated a flood of phone calls to the call center—enough to fill the study. We also managed a patient recruitment campaign in 20 markets for Northstar Neuroscience for its clinical trial of cortical stimulation for stroke and just wrapped a project for client BioMS, helping to recruit patients for a Phase III trial of an experimental Multiple Sclerosis drug, Dirucotide. The goal, achieved in part with our PR assistance—recruit 510 patients for 68 U.S. clinical sites.
Tags:
clinical trial recruitment,
EnteroMedics,
healthcare PR,
medical device PR,
obesity device
Posted by Helen Shik on October 28, 2008 at 11:59 AM
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