To my left, ladies and gentlemen, the long-established, little-understood, very buttoned up and very expensive process of bringing new drugs to commercial fruition. To my right… the blogosphere… a messy petrie dish of social media experimentation, fermentation, and foment of the moment. Now watch them collide:

Blogs, bulletin boards and social networks are providing people looking for real-time information about the safety and efficacy of drugs with valuable and sometimes controversial insights.  For example, last year doctors using the social network Sermo reported that patients taking Lipitor were experiencing vivid and repeated nightmares.  This finding was the subject of national news and illustrated the power of social networks to highlight information that may warrant further investigation.

That's taken from this item by Fard Johnmar on Healthcare Vox. If you're in the pharmaceutical industry or healthcare in general and you've yet to visit Paree, go now, toot sweet.

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