That's a tough one. Plenty of communities have emerged independently around diseases, conditions, even for independently reporting on adverse drug reactions, but you're pushing for direct involvement of the drug company. Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Tie community buildng to new drug development and testing. Incorporate mutual support and feedback into the mix of what is being tested -- and closely monitored -- in order to reniforce things like seeing that specific target groups take their medication correctly. Maybe this approach could be adapted for introduction of medical technology and therapeutic devices, not just drugs.
   
2. Build community around communities already related to patients -- caregivers, nurses, therapists. Emphasize lessons learned, tricks of the trade, mutual encouragement and support. Drug company rewards most original/helpful/adopted ideas that emerge from the group.
   
3. Target a group such as hospital pharmacists to aid in developping and sharing "best practices."

Just some ideas. Thoughts?

Dennis McDonald

http://www.ddmcd.com

An interesting one. We currently sell compliance/quality software and one of our largest markets is healthcare and life sciences, such as hospitals, blood banks, medical device manufacturers, pathology labs, pharmaceutical/drug manufacturers etc. Our software is designed to help companies in these markets to comply with FDA and other regulations (e.g. MHRA in the UK, EU guidelines, ISO standards, etc).

In terms of using communities, I've had a few customers from FDA regulated industries participate and haven't noticed anything different... perhaps the fact that there's not a lot of users from pharma companies that is the difference.

While im still alittle hesitant on this one due to its subject (consumers are -rarely- truely qualified when it comes to medicinal drugs, doctor should always be ones first call if theres an undiagnoised problem).

Mike provided some good solid information there, i dont know what your -actually- trying to do (put customers more in touch with phrama companies so they can buy more drugs???), but if pharma companies have "put in place knowledge collection and sharing in the discovery and development area." with a decent amount of "legwork" it should be possible to take those seperate threads and plug them into a single "community".

Just remeber though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard's_Rule#Wizard.27s_First_Rule (People are stupid)

and

"If it can be made someone will make it, if it is made someone will unmake it and/or someone will change it and/or someone will use it in ways its not intended to be used and/or someone will turn it into a "weapon"."