In today's age, it is criminal for a brand or a product to not listen to social media conversations. The reason being that most conversations on social media are honest feedback from the people who have used a particular brand and are commenting on its effectiveness, or even on the difficulties they face. Even healthcare, which as an industry is slow to adopt new marketing technologies because it is heavily regulated, has begun to have its presence on social media.

The reasoning behind their presence is because they have realized the importance of social media conversations. Artificial Intelligence tools are predicting changes that the healthcare sector knows will propel the industry to sustain in this uber-competitive world. It wouldn't be wrong to say that social media intelligence gathered based on conversations taking place on online platforms gives an insight that is mostly unbiased. As the subject from whom information is gathered isn't being prompted to answer any specific questionnaire unlike the traditional methods of research.

For pharmaceutical companies, conversations from social media and online public media platforms are of great use, as they can gauge what patients, doctors, caregivers, and even pharmacists are talking about.

Today we have social media platforms where people discuss everything and that too in detail may it be a disease, medicines available for the disease, and even the positive and negative side effects of particular medicines. As mentioned above these are not coaxed discussions, but genuine ones where patients share their ordeal and even positive stories of how a certain medicine has helped them. Social media conversations are important because they are experiences especially of stakeholders including doctors, patients, and former patients. They mostly speak about what the company desires to know -- it is the good, bad and also sometimes ugly experiences which helps a company upgrade and better their products.

While almost everyone has realized the importance of social media conversations, it is humanly impossible to sniff through the huge volume of conversations to dig out what is of importance. Social media intelligence tools powered by AI come in handy over here. It is this tool that prompts when a company or its products are being discussed online. Intelligence is gathered from unprompted conversations which means that the company gets raw research material. Insights from analysing these conversations can be used for formulating strategy. For example, a pharma company before launching a specific product can listen to social media conversations relating to similar products that exist in the market, including about their packaging, pricing, and their effectiveness. Based on these insights from these conversations a Pharma company can easily derive a strategy on how it wants to launch its new product.

The intelligence gathered using AI can help a pharma company understand its stakeholders better and thus come up with strategies that will help it grow. An online conversation isn't only limited to praises, it also can be a rant about a side effect of a medicine. We have umpteen examples, where negative experiences have garnered more eyeballs than positive ones. AI propelled tools come into play here, which can nip the fire at the start, as it will prompt the company, which can take corrective measures, by reaching out to the affected person and solve his or her problem. Thus by smartly resolving the issue, a big fiasco can be avoided.

Not all online conversations are about the product, they are also about the senior management of a company, and keeping a tab on such conversation is also healthy as it helps to understand the perception that a common man holds for the company. Remember reputation is of great importance, once tarnished, it is hard to regain the same trust, so if not catered at the beginning, it can have a huge impact. Social Media Intelligence gathering also has an upper hand over traditional research. Traditional research mostly is looking for answers to which questions already exist, however, social media intelligence gathering is all about knowing the pulse of the stakeholders. Traditional researches and AI-based research bother are here to stay, as both have their importance. AI-based research is cheaper, and instant, and can be used when the company is looking to understand something from their stakeholders really quick.

To be good in the business one also has to be a good listener, AI tools help the company listen to the stakeholders, who are ultimately the ones to make a product successful. Healthcare industries get to know the pulse of the beneficiary of its product conversations. AI predicts what the company should do, where it needs to change, what it needs to change, and how it needs to strategise to overcome the difficulties at the earliest to stay afloat in the competitive market.

The author is Dr Ranjit Nair, CEO, Germin8