Pharma's use of social media channels like Facebook and YouTube is just the start of a “reshuffling of information consumption”, according to Sanofi.

In a guest blog for US industry body PhRMA, the company's US senior director of media relations Jack Cox said that working with patient communities will be an important part of its future strategy.

There has been an explosion of sites dedicated to pseudoscience and fear-mongering, he said, adding that “no industry has a bigger repository of vetted, authoritative health information than ours”.

Pharmaceutical companies have experimented extensively with using different social networks to provide patients with health information.

Sanofi's own social media efforts in the US include:

• The Discuss Diabetes blog it launched in January 2011
• The @SanofiUS, @Diabetes_sanofi and @GoMeals Twitter accounts
• Corporate and diabetes-focused presences on Facebook, and a Facebook page for its Data Design Diabetes competition, which was launched last week

But Sanofi's work to date in social media is, Cox said, “just the tip of the iceberg”.

“Increasingly, patients will demand information tailored specifically to them and those with similar health concerns, a level of detail that no evening news broadcast or baby book could possibly fulfill.

“These emerging communities are instead turning online to share what they've learned with each other. Our participation in those communities – as subject matter experts, not as salespeople – will be central to the flow of accurate information in tomorrow's information ecosystem,” he said.

Digital inspiration for pharma on mobile, social media, strategy, best practice, regulations and more