My love affair with my iPhone continues and the thing I am enjoying most about it is the apps store. (`Apps' is shorthand for `Applications', for the un-initiated.) The sheer volume and variety of apps available to download to your iPhone is incredible. They range from free games to software that allows you to read MRIs, and many are being heavily promoted in recent television advertising.

Those in the pharma industry believe that rep numbers will be declining over the next few years and we predict that e-marketing will increasingly be used to fill the gap. Already we are seeing very strong growth in the number of e-projects we are undertaking for our clients.

 The ZEST Wellbeing program in action!

The author of a New England Journal of Medicine article¹ earlier this year ponders the question: "Is [the journalist's] job to describe the bigger picture or simply to report what is `new'?" She argues that in the attempt to produce hype, many journalists frame a story as new or different, resulting in misleading messages and lack of appropriate context.

Welcome to the new look ZEST blog! Those of you who have been reading our posts since we kicked off way back in 2007 will know we love to share our thoughts and insights about a range of topics that affect those in the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession, as well as those hard-working agency folk. Occasionally brilliant, often thought provoking, and always brief, our intent is to get people talking about current stuff that impacts on what we do.

Happy New Year and welcome to our first blog for 2009! January is always a busy time for us here at ZEST, as we prepare materials for our clients' cycle meetings and complete the finishing touches to new programs and educational activities that will be rolled out when the reps get back on the road.

When we talk about `next-generation' medicine, we tend to think about advances in treatments, diagnostic tools or preventative approaches such as vaccines. But what about `next-generation' healthcare providers?

The arrival of the iPhone and other smart phones has quickly changed the way we use the internet.  Email and SMS technology has been available for many years via your mobile but the ability to easily access You Tube, Google maps, Safari and a host of other content through an iPhone is revolutionary.

When you hear the term `key opinion leader', who immediately springs to mind? A specialist or GP who commonly takes the lead in a therapy area, or maybe a leading academic in a particular field of research? But do your thoughts extend to members of other healthcare professions - say nurses, pharmacists, or physiotherapists?

As budgets get smaller and pharmaceutical companies get more competitive, we are constantly striving to find different ways to market new therapies. Some companies are attempting to secure doctor and patient groups even before their therapy has received approval.