HealthContentAdvisors

Monetizing Online Health Communities

• Posted May 16th 2008
• by Janice

 My colleague, Russell Perkins, writes this week about how a partnership between Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and iGuard.org is selling access to the information collected in patient community sites to investors, pharmaceutical companies, and other healthcare industry stakeholders.   

Sermo, one of the participants in our Health Content07 conference last fall, is now providing paid access to market researchers in the medical field who want to poll Sermo’s communities of experts.    

The Wall St. Journal reported earlier this week about another company, EmergingMed, that is leveraging its online patient communities by playing matchmaker between existing patient community sites and the medical research teams that are seeking recruits to test cutting-edge treatments in clinical trials.  According to the WSJ article, one survey by Harris Interactive revealed that 75% of cancer patients would have been willing to enroll in a relevant clinical trial “had they known it was possible”. 

These are all great examples of market-driven information products and show how social networking sites can broaden their revenue base beyond online advertising.