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Increased pharmaceutical expenses have proven to be one of the greatest sources of frustrations in modern America's dealing with their broken healthcare system. With increased American vigilance upon their health, there are more trips to the doctor's office and with doctors more likely to be prescribing medication for various ailments; people are receiving more and more prescriptions. Healthcare practitioners do everything they can to better inform individuals about the changes in their medications and treatment plans. Alongside this, the population itself has been educating itself using the internet and, more specifically, pharma social media. Pharma social media, like any kind of social media, has many pros and cons. The greater access to information Is great, but for pharmaceutical companies it has become of tantamount importance to become aware of the content created by users. This has also become extremely difficult due to the total amount of misinformation that exists and continues to be read, interpreted, and acted upon. People are constantly looking for information on new medications, treatments, and physicians. Analyzing these new prescription drugs and other new possible pharmaceutical treatments are quite common across social media and the results are a mish mash of fact, conjecture, opinion, and lies. Many times these posts are light on facts or data and rely on anecdotal evidence and speculation. Often times these rumors can spin out of control and pharmaceutical companies can find it hard to combat this once it goes viral and has taken hold. The people that use social media for information regarding pharmaceuticals tend to be of a tight knit group, so when one story begins spreading, it can be hard to stop. Because of that and because many people still don't use the internet fully, television, print and radio still have a very strong place in terms of reaching out to potential customers. Spending on television and radio is still larger than spending on internet outlets for most pharmaceutical companies. That's currently true, but likely to change. For now, companies know they can control the message being presented on the television, in print, and on radio. Still, the power of the internet is inevitable and pharmaceutical companies know they have to deal with social media today and increasingly moving forward. The internet has made finding the best pharmaceutical treatments easier than ever. Sometimes it can seem that people are facing too many choices in their treatment options and misleading information from social media can only confuse the matter further. It can be made even harder when the patient isn't able to separate fact from fiction within pharma social media. So the good, where individuals are in greater control of their own content and can look into any potential pharmaceutical options is offset by the downside where a given company or pharmaceutical entity is damaged by the misleading information that tends to gather upon various social media outlets. For an individual, balancing all of the pros and cons of dealing with Pharma Social Media can be a challenge, one that isn't any closer to being easier to count for reliable and truthful information. Kevin Waddel is a free lance writer. To get more information about Public relations, Public Relations New York, Pharma Social Media and Health Public Relations visit http://www.makovsky.com
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