Creation Healthcare has launched what it says is the world's first social media monitoring tool dedicated to studying healthcare professionals' public conversations.

The UK-based research and training consultancy's new Creation Pinpoint offering is based on a proprietary database of healthcare professionals (HCPs) that are active on social media.

It uses this information to identify 'digital opinion leaders' and connects publicly available information about HCPs with what they're saying in open channels.

Creation Healthcare's CEO Daniel Ghinn said: “With Creation Pinpoint pharmaceutical brand teams can now identify precisely which healthcare professionals are talking about their brands or therapy areas, anywhere in the world, and track the influence that they have on each other.”

Talking to PMLiVE prior to the tool's launch, Ghinn said Creation Pinpoint was an acknowledgement that HCP conversations are moving outside closed HCP-only networks.

He cited the example of the Twitter Journal Club, a fortnightly Twitter chat where HCPs discuss medical papers, and the rise in HCP use of public forums and doctors' blogs. 

Creation Pinpoint is built on the established social media monitoring platform Brandwatch, and uses a database of manually-verified social media profiles of HCPs.

It shows the most influential and active HCPs that mention any drug or indication and allows users to see profiles of individual doctors, discover what they are saying, and review conversation themes as they emerge, through an online dashboard. Users can also receive email alerts as soon as HCPs mention specific keywords.

• Read: Daniel Ghinn's practical guide to digital opinion leaders

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