J&J holds blogger-only media event

US health care giant Johnson & Johnson has hosted an event for health care blog writers (bloggers) in the Boston area, as part of the drug  major's outreach and communications strategy. The firm is already one of  the pharmaceutical sector's innovators in the use of on-line techniques,  such as sponsoring patient groups on the social networking web site  Facebook, posting short videos on the movie-clip hosting site YouTube,  as well as running its own blog (jnjbtw.com).

J&J spokesman Rob Halper, who reported on the event, noted that the  company's participants asked about "how a company like ours, with  experience and expertise in so many areas of health, could bring value  to patients through social media." Among the media platforms under  discussion were Facebook and Twitter, a hybrid on-line/cell phone  text-messaging service.