Steve Case,
chairman and CEO of Revolution Health and co-founder of AOL, yesterday lamented
pharma's hesitation to embrace interactive and inject a greater share of
promotional budget into online initiatives.
“It is
astonishing to me how under-invested this industry is in digital media,” Case
told delegates at the 7th annual ePharma Summit in Philadelphia. “This is
crazy.”
The biggest
problem, he said, is that consumers are not actively engaged, referring to how
easy it is to log onto the web on a Sunday afternoon to buy, say, U2 concert
tickets, but how it is not possible to schedule an appointment with a doctor.
However, Case is
confident that, given time, present hurdles to online initiatives, such as
regulatory and privacy issues, will be overcome and that the healthcare
community will start to “experiment more aggressively” and eventually embrace
digital media. He recalled the early days of e-commerce as an example of how
online attitudes and user behavior transform over time.
“If I'd stood up
back then and suggested that consumers would enter their credit card number
onto [Amazon.com], that the number would be stored for future purchases, and
that the site would recommend what they should buy next time, I'd have been run
out of the room.”
Case, whose
mission is to turn Revolution Health into the largest online healthcare
network, urged the 300 or so marketers in attendance to stick with it,
reminding them that this is a fun business to be in.
“Although the
second 10 years [at Time Warner] was where all the fame and fortune was,” he
revealed, “I actually enjoyed the first 10 years more—and I was better at it.”