At a time when consumers are turning to the Web to check their symptoms when they don’t feel well and to double-check their doctors’ prescriptions, mastering new media is becoming increasingly important to healthcare marketers.

With that in mind, Interpublic Group’s Emerging Media Lab recently hired Raquel Krouse as VP and director of healthcare. She will work with Interpublic agencies and healthcare clients to make sure they are on the leading edge of communications with both healthcare professionals and consumers.

Ms. Krouse said the healthcare industry has been quick to adopt some forms of new media, but slower to jump on others.

With about 60 percent of physicians using Palm Pilots and other personal digital assistants in their practice, healthcare marketers have been in the forefront in using mobile media to get their professional messages out.

But she said it has been more difficult for the pharmaceutical companies to really understand how to deal with all of the user-generated content and social networking about healthcare that is going on on the Web.

“What we are looking to do with the lab is to look at best practices and learnings to see what companies are doing and to work with the different Interpublic Group agencies to make sure that they’re at the lead of this new environment,” Ms. Krouse said.

It’s tricky for pharmaceutical companies because so much of what they can say about their products is regulated by the government. But at the same time, online information sources are free to talk about the company’s products.

“People are talking, and there’s a lot of health information that’s out there now that’s created by various users, some of it accurate, some of it inaccurate,” Ms. Krouse said. “It’s important to think from a pharmaceutical company’s perspective to make sure that they provide accurate information out into this world.”

She said she’s seen estimates that about a third of adults online use social media to get health information. When you do a search for a particular drug or a condition, the results you’ll receive will be about 80 percent user-generated.

“That’s why it’s important for pharmaceutical companies to recognize who these new influencers are and make them a part of the marketing mix in some sense, whether it’s just making sure that they have the accurate information or working with them in some way,” she said.

To some degree, to be effective, pharmaceutical companies need to accept their inability to totally control what’s being said about their product on the Web, according to Ms. Krouse. But at the same time, when they do choose to communicate, through a sponsored blog, for example, they need to be totally transparent so that they retain credibility.

She said pharmaceutical companies have a lot of great content produced for medical conferences and sales meetings that they can distribute on the Web. “Taking an inventory of all this and seeing where else it would be relevant” would help them beef up their Web presence, she said.

Ms. Krouse grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., and wanted to be an inventor or work for a TV show. One of her first solo ventures was producing segments for a show that appeared on CNBC called “Living Longer,” geared to the 50-plus audience.

That was just before the Internet took off and she saw opportunity there. She was building Web sites for clients that sponsored the show when she took a job at CDMiConnect, a healthcare agency that was starting an interactive division.

“Most companies didn’t even have a Web site at that point, so we really were able to be pretty innovative,” she said.

She moved from the agency to open her own digital marketing consultancy, called I-magine Development, which lasted about four years.

Then she decided to move to Los Angeles. Searching for something new and challenging, she found the Media Lab’s ad on Craigslist.

“When I met with the actual lab staff as well as the different healthcare agencies that are part of the IPG group, I was really impressed with what they were already doing and looking to do,” she said. “I thought it was a great opportunity.”

In her spare time, Ms. Krouse, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., does yoga, takes walks on the beach with her dog and hangs out with her boyfriend.

She recently got to attend the Comedy Central roast of Flavor Flav.

“I thought it was very funny,” she said. “He’s a character.”

WHO KNEW: Ms. Krouse says her name was once part of a Trivial Pursuit question. A while ago, she and a partner acquired the license to relaunch the ’80s girl brand Camp Beverly Hills, and the people who put together the pop-culture DVD edition of the game noticed. “What 1980s clothing brand known by its log lettering was brought back by Raquel Krouse?” was the question. “That’s my claim to fame,” she said.

This article is part of TVWeek.com's Media Planner newsletter, a weekly source of breaking news, trend articles, profiles and data about media planning edited by Senior Editor Jon Lafayette.