Marketing a Journal Article...

We received this mail a while ago from Dan Jeffers...

While reviewing blogs and Web sites that discuss blood disorders, I noticed that yours seems to be well-read and well-informed. Your readers may be interested in the recent clinical practice guidelines for von Willebrand Disease (VWD) offered by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. These are the first clinical guidelines in the United States for the diagnosis and management of von Willebrand Disease (VWD), the most common inherited bleeding disorder. The guidelines include recommendations on screening, diagnosis, disease management, and directions for future research. An extensive article on the guidelines is published online Feb. 29 in the journal Haemophilia.

“These are the first guidelines on von Willebrand Disease published in the United States and we are pleased to offer clinicians science-based recommendations in the evaluation and treatment of patients,” said NHLBI Director Elizabeth G. Nabel, M.D. “The disease can be difficult to diagnose, especially in women of child-bearing age and in children, and the danger of excessive bleeding is often under-recognized.”

The guidelines can be found at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/vwd/index.htm, and are available for purchase or download.

We hope that you will reach out to your audience by posting a link and/or commenting about the recent guidelines. Thanks for helping us spread the word.

Regards,
Dan Jeffers
Internet Marketing Specialist for
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

What interests me most is not the guidelines for Von Willebrands disease (for medical personel can be found here), it's the fact that medical marketing seems to have taken a new turn.

Before, if a new guideline was published, it could be found in the latest journals like the NEMJ, BMJ, AMJ, SAMJ, CME (there are many (x 100) more) and you would get to know about it via word of mouth. Usually a collegue in the specific field of medicine would have either seen it in his journal, heard about it at a conference, or a drug rep would spread the word. Mostly reputable sources.

It is interesting, that in this new landscape of everything being accessible online (don't get me into the exhorbitant prices you pay to access journals) that this seems to be a new way to market. Get it on Blogs, have the medical Bloggers promote it. It's definately a cheaper and perhaps more far reaching marketing tool. But do you always trust the bloggers information?

This at least comes from a reputable site, so I know the info is good. But in the ever increasing world wide web, where a ton of stuff is factitious (see earlier post about men having babies) and where is it getting harder to distinguish legitimate medical sites from the hocus-pocus out there - I am sceptical about the marketing means...

I don't know...

Jury is out for me...

I'm still trying to decide if I like this type of marketing or if it going to create more headaches in the long run with the large, and sometimes painful, website and information verification process.