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Digital Pharma: First big pharma Android apps launched

pharmafile | January 4, 2011 | News story | Medical Communications Android, Digital Pharma blog, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, apps, ipad, iphone 

Big pharma’s smartphone marketing is starting to look beyond Apple’s attention-grabbing iPhone as companies produce the first apps for its main rival.

Google’s Android operating system, which powers phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S and a range of iPad competitors, has been rapidly gaining market share and last year overtook the iPhone as the best-selling smartphone platform in the US.

Now Android apps aimed at US consumers and healthcare professionals have emerged from big pharma and, as with the iPhone, the first companies to engage with the technology are Sanofi-Aventis and Novartis.

Novartis has launched two brand new apps and taken the decision to make them both available in Android, iPhone and Blackberry versions.

The Novartis Oncology Medical Information app offers US healthcare professionals prescribing information, the latest standard response documents to download and the ability to submit inquiries directly to the company’s medical information team. It can also be downloaded for iPhone or BlackBerry.

Novartis has also launched an Android app for US consumers. Its WheresFlu app follows sickness incidence levels and tracks the current top five affected cities in the US.

The app, which has been produced to support Novartis’ over-the-counter cold and flu treatment Theraflu, is also available in iPhone and BlackBerry versions.

Another Android app for US consumers is Sanofi’s Go Meals healthy eating app, which is aimed at people like diabetics, whose condition can make obtaining nutritional information critically important.

It was launched for the iPhone in 2009 and last year the company produced an iPad version. Like those apps the Android version combines three tools – a nutritional database, a food-tracking tool to record meals and a restaurant locator.

The emergence of Android apps suggests that, if big pharma’s smartphone marketing was last year all about iPhone apps, this year will see a wider focus as competition heats up in both the smartphone and tablet computer markets.

Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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