If you're "just running" the outward-facing part of the social media equation, it's difficult to truly leverage the insights of your audience. You need help from other team members who can actually effect the change your audience is asking for. You need them to be receptive to new ideas, and to implement changes where they need to occur.

Starting with the question "how will we make money?" and working your way to the patient will lead to irrelevance. I assure you, if that model is flipped and you start with the patient -- the money will follow.

Digitally enabled social conversations around health are here to stay, and they will play an important role in how people make health decisions. Just as clearly, until pharma becomes actively engaged with those conversations, the potential for social media to positively impact patient health will fall short of its full potential.

There is greater regulatory interest in the privacy issues surrounding these records but you read it here first that, with that much data accumulating, there will be a new force to become acquainted with and perhaps master in this industry.

This mobile healthcare technology sector will continue to develop rapidly but it's clear that pharma and other health care brands will need to take a flexible, multi-variable approach to achieving success in the mobile medical world.

Healthcare consumerism is growing and requires consistent nourishment -- that is where the profound opportunity lies for health organizations. The more options patients have to deepen their engagement, make informed decisions and manage expenses, the better.

Those of us who live in the America of highly regulated health marketing can learn something from this other America. I hope we see these two worlds converging because they both share the goal of making sure we all get the treatments we need, when we need them so we can have the best health outcomes individually and as a society.

In the health category, regardless of whether the target is the patient, health-focused consumer or health care professional, multi-media, multi-platform messaging is the requirement as the viewers are all multi-media, multi-platform junkies.

Every year, our media department discussed ditching our tried-and-true printed annual report and creating one exclusively online. And every year we bought into all the reasons not to. This year, we held fast and took the plunge.

If pharmaceutical companies want to truly leverage the amplification power of social media, then whatever the FDA rules shouldn't mean a damn thing to their core approach.