Novartis, partners launch digital patient awareness programs

Within the framework of the project, healthcare experts will provide professional advice and develop disease awareness and health-related content, while Hello Bacsi uses digital platforms to spread this content to patients and the community.

Content will be developed for both patients and caregivers in diverse formats including articles, infographics and videos, which can be accessed conveniently and easily. The collaboration will initially focus on ophthalmology, dermatology and rheumatology, asthma and COPD, and breast cancer. It is expected to expand into other therapeutic areas in future.

An estimated 10.3 million people will have access to these useful information.

Hello Bacsi’s website interface. Photo by: Novartis

According to January 2021 statistics, Vietnam's population comprises 97.75 million, of which about 68.72 million are internet users, accounting for 70.3 percent of the total. Social media accounts number 72 million, accounting for 73.7 percent of the total population. The habit of regularly using digital tools has brought remarkable changes to people’s health awareness.

"At Novartis, we understand these dynamics and our role in sharing the responsibility and partnering with the health sector via a patient-centric approach. We have seized the opportunity of leveraging digital platforms to improve people’s health and disease awareness, update disease prevention knowledge, and to subsequently encourage people to proactively conduct periodic health screening for early detection and treatment, to enable them to live healthy and quality lives," said Amitabh Dube, country president of Novartis Vietnam.

Hello Bacsi is a unit of Hello Health Group, founded in 2015 with a mission to lead Asia in the democratization of health & wellness knowledge, empowering millions of consumers and patients to make more informed decisions and to live healthier and happier lives.

Hello Bacsi has built a digital technology ecosystem with many tools to engage users across the Hello Bacsi website, Facebook, Instagram and Zalo.

Currently, Hello Bacsi is a health & wellness knowledge platform in Vietnam with 24.7 million monthly views, 10.3 million users, 2.48 million followers on social media and more than 23,000 items of content. This ecosystem promises to deliver medically reviewed, relevant and engaging health and wellness information and services in local language.

In early 2020, Novartis Vietnam became one of the first multinational pharmaceutical companies to successfully transform into a foreign-invested enterprise and fully operationalize its import activities.

The company is a leader in innovative medicines across many therapeutic areas: oncology, cardiovascular (hypertension, heart failure, diabetes), respiratory (asthma, COPD, ); ophthalmology; pain relief; neuroscience, dermatology and immunology, cell and gene therapy.

Find out more at https://www.novartis.com.