Online engagement: Breaking down international barriers

With sales and marketing department cuts, and increased pressure on resources, engaging physicians internationally as part of an integrated, multi-channel approach, presents a real challenge for the pharma industry.

Networks in Health – the unique international alliance of online physician networks, which was founded by Doctors.net.uk in 2011 – is helping leading pharma companies break down international barriers by enabling them to reach more than 1.6m physicians worldwide via a single, coordinated access point.

By working in partnership with the most trusted online physician networks in Europe, Latin America and Australia, as well as the US and also Asia , Networks in Health ensures relevance, consistency of message and regulatory compliance in these individual territories, and provides detailed campaign measurement and evaluation. 

Work conducted by Networks in Health to date includes a campaign that has been created to help a pharma company reduce the operating cost of promoting its nocturnal enuresis product to GPs in the UK by moving from a contract sales organisation (CSO) to a predominantly online approach, now rolled out in other key G5 countries in Europe. The multi-wave campaign comprises educational and promotional content; ongoing message development activities based on feedback from doctors in the UK and Germany; re-use of key client resources and information from the UK in other target countries; and a central framework for local adaptation and application.

Another campaign running through Networks in Health has involved the creation of a trial, digital platform to improve doctors' knowledge of a growth hormone treatment. The six-month programme, across the UK, France and Germany, has so far reached more than 4,000 GPs and endocrinologists, and is enabling the company to develop its messaging to doctors in those countries. 

A third promotional and educational programme is supporting traditional sales and marketing activity via a multi-territory digital platform. The ongoing 12-month multi-wave programme, which began in the UK and then extended to Germany, is now being rolled out to Italy, Australia, Brazil and Mexico, and is enabling customised and flexible targeting of GPs, cardiologists, internal medicine specialists, neurologists, haematologists, orthopaedic specialists, pneumologists and intensive care specialists. 

The examples listed above demonstrate some of the innovative ways in which pharma companies can think global, yet act local by engaging with all kinds of doctors in multiple international networks via a single, coordinated point of access. This way of working enables them to deliver measurable results that deliver clear and measurable ROI. 

For more information on Doctors.net.uk, please call Simon Grime on +44 (0)1235 828400, or email Simon.Grime@mess.doctors.org.uk. You can also follow Doctors.net.uk on twitter: doctors_net_uk

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