The health of the world is at stake and you're the only one that can save us...

Boehringer Ingleheim's Digital Innovation Team Leader John Pugh is in Paris presenting at the Doctors 2.0 conference. John is speaking at the conference about the latest gaming and competitive education within the Physician engagement in global networked communities segment.

During the presentation John releases the latest statistics for Syrum, which is well into the Beta testing phase. It is with excitement that these demographics are made public, especially as Syrum development continues with plenty of exciting updates in the pipeline. 

But so far, how successful has Syrum been as a social media game about the pharma industry?

- Syrum seems to be more popular with those who are 25 - 32 years old.

- 56.3% of Syrum players are women

- Over 9000 players have mixed compounds in the Syrum Lab

Syrum has received quite a lot of buzz since it's beta launch last year, including almost 22,000 tweets, proving that social media is ready for a game about the pharma industry.

As one of the teamleaders in Boehringer Ingelheim's Digital Innovation Team, John is responsible for Boehringer Ingelheim’s global social media strategy and is regularly cited as a global thought leader in the field.

Click here to view the infographic in full.

Since the public beta launch of Syrum development has been on-going. We’ve received some great feedback from those who have played the game so far, allowing us to make the changes you requested ahead of the launch of the full game later this year.

Skip all cut-scenes – you mentioned that you’d like to have the ability to control what you see during gameplay. After each outcome a short scene with Professor Syrum plays. You wanted to be able to opt-out of this permanently from within the game options section. We made this change and also added the ability to skip from within the cut-scene once it has begun playing. This is now live within the game and you can opt-out by browsing to Menu > Game Options > Cut Scenes and selecting “Skip all cut-scenes”.

View gift sender’s avatar – Facebook friends who are also playing Syrum can send you a gift (and if you’re feeling generous you can send them one too).  Now you can view your friend’s Facebook avatar too from within the gift details, my gifts, and gift notifications screen.

There is a lot happening behind the scenes of the Syrum public beta game, including the following which has been developed and is awaiting release:

Cancel an experiment and headhunting request – sometimes you need to cancel what you’re doing, it happens to the best scientists, and the Syrum lab is no exception.  We’ve developed the function that allows you to cancel a current experiment and also a headhunting request.

Logic of the experiment timings has been adjusted – The components that you create in the Syrum lab no longer expire, however they do slowly decay if not used, over time reducing their quality until they are the minimum.

Thank you to everyone who has played so far and provided us with their feedback. We couldn’t continue to make positive development decisions without your invaluable input. Not only does your feedback influence the creative progress, you also earn an in-game bonus just for letting us know what you think.

Team Syrum.

“Leveraging the power of gaming and the social network, Facebook, Syrum brings to the public the opportunity to understand the research and development of drugs, the challenges faced by the scientists and the complex work of the pharmaceutical industry in order to drive clinical development, and set-up an efficient organization.

Fostering knowledge and understanding the challenges faced by the healthcare industry might help fight the perception that the Pharma companies “are living at the expenses of the public health insurance”.

It is interesting to note that, while the pharma companies are always being closely scrutinized companies in other sectors such as the footwear company, Nike, or General Electric Healthcare’s campaigns don’t attract such controversy.”

Article written by Claire Bastien and published on IE Marketing Weblog on 8 November, 2012. To read the full article, click on Read More below.