New sources of insight can illuminate previously hard-to-see needs in the population. These data are free or very low-cost if you ask the questions and crunch the numbers.

While much of the initial announcement for the Social Media Health Network seems to focus on a more top-down approach to community involvement, my hope is that there is room in the equation for a bottom-up approach that enables a true partnership with the people the initiative is ultimately trying to serve.

All of this planning reminded me of a play my son's fifth grade class presented last June at the end of the school year. That's a bit of a leap, so allow me to explain how these things are connected.

The truly new media plans will be very digital, but that is the boring part. More importantly, they will be in tune with what that channel makes possible so that marketing campaigns can fit very important individual interests and affinities.

A new health site, ChickRx.com, embraces that sentiment and in the process adds a new wrinkle to the definition of "social media." With a combination of expert medical advice, celebrity health coverage and possibly the most entertaining use of tags on the web; ChickRx uses a mix of humor and health expertise for its target audience of 20-something women.

The answer is not always a Facebook page and, in fact, this tactic may be more detrimental than beneficial to a brand. This is regularly the case in the pharmaceutical industry, where it may not occur to the "social media strategist" that no one wants to "like" a hypertension product on Facebook, and that in fact this is probably not the right tactic for this brand at all.

In health, where concerns about privacy and customized messaging are probably the highest in the industry, the odds of placing one ad informed by user intent are increased by both scrutiny of the ad's content and the need to place relevant ads in informational context. The irony here is that the best next step may be to evaluate the informational value of advertising in the largely transactional world of health information gathering.

The bond connecting physicians and pharmaceutical companies is as strong as ever and is not going away. However, in order to acknowledge and respect the way in which technology is changing the ways that physicians run their practices and provide for their patients, pharmaceutical companies need to realign their sales and marketing practices.

Being able to listen closely to the vernacular of those you are trying to convert, and then contouring your message to them in a way they can relate to can go a long way to cultivating internal champions.

Smartphones are not just brilliantly nimble devices for reaching PCPs and specialists; they allow you to learn about and develop a relationship with the doctors who can mean the most to your marketing.