Physicians are lifelong learners – and that includes learning about clinical advancements that have the potential to change how they practice to provide the best possible care to their patients. Yet with so many studies and novel findings being published at an exponentially fast pace, it can be a challenge to identify which information is worthy of physicians’ limited time and meaningful for their patients.
In fact, a recent survey of more than 550 healthcare professionals (HCPs) across five specialties on our medical news and education site, Univadis, found that 84% say it’s difficult to prioritise research that will impact how they practice medicine – and 87% admitted that fewer than half of the studies they review actually have a clinical impact.
The ability to serve up clinical content in meaningful, credible and personally relevant ways offers pharma brands an opportunity to be part of the conversation about care and treatment options and has shown to yield measurable behaviour change in the HCP audiences who engage in this content. Let’s take a look at some examples.
Identifying the practice changers
One way to encourage behaviour change among HCP audiences is to help them cut through the clutter and identify the relatively small percentage of new content that has the potential to actually change practice. The physician experts who contribute to our Univadis platform let us draw attention to what they believe to be the most essential practice-changing new evidence in their field and offer their expert clinical analysis to their peers in a range of convenient digital formats – including videos and podcasts.
From a commercial standpoint, offering HCPs relevant content while they’re in a learning mindset has the power to dramatically improve engagement while simultaneously increasing their understanding of a brand and how it fits into their treatment regimens for appropriate patients.
For example, we worked with a pharma client to increase awareness of a branded diabetes therapy ahead of launch. The year- long digital campaign included a range of materials – including educational articles, quizzes, emails and banners – featuring relevant Key Opinion Leaders. The content was designed to enhance the conversation between HCPs and patients and educate them on the need to better manage risk factors.
Analysis showed that the campaign yielded a 43% increase in awareness across more than 20,000 GPs and specialists. In addition, it generated an increase of up to 15% in how HCPs perceive a key risk factor when treating patients with diabetes – a message that was important to our client to communicate to the market before launch. Such shifts in awareness are attributable to the ability to engage
HCP audiences with credible information, through a wide range of digital channels.
Using teachable moments to engage different HCP audiences
Digital also has the power to bring together different specialties of a care team at scale to support a more holistic approach to patient care. Offering HCPs a view into their colleagues’ perceptions and behaviours around a certain topic can change clinical practice and, subsequently, improve patient care.
For example, we helped one of our pharma clients use digital engagement tools to foster a greater understanding between two key specialties. After testing HCPs’ knowledge of a specific treatment option, the client discovered that these two different specialties had very different perceptions on how to treat patients exhibiting this medical condition.
By revealing this gap in understanding between the two audiences – and helping these different specialists ‘teach’ each other their treatment protocol – the brand is helping pave the way to more connected patient care. The gap is made credible because it is based on real HCP engagement – including Key Opinion Leaders and aggregate polling data from each of the two specialties targeted in this programme. Meanwhile, the brand is aligning itself with these messages to ensure it is at the top of HCPs’ minds when HCPs in either specialty encounter this clinical scenario.
Target messages based on propensity to engage
Of course, it’s not just enough to develop messages aimed at behaviour change – the message also has to engage the audiences for whom the content is most relevant. This requires the strategic use of data, which includes understanding how an audience, or even an individual HCP, will respond to educational and promotional content when delivered as part of an integrated programme.
The outputs of this model can inform the right mix of communication tools – from the light engagement of a clinical alert or hyper-targeted mobile message to the deeper engagement of an interactive, expert-led piece of content. In short, this type of analysis can be applied to increase the likelihood that messaging will be seen, assimilated and acted upon.
The data is clear – HCPs value content that is trustworthy, relevant and easy to digest. When pharma marketers abide by these guidelines, they have the opportunity to not only facilitate meaningful engagements that can inspire behaviour change, but also use these interactions to learn more about how HCPs make decisions – insights which can be used to deliver even more relevant, more valuable content that can have a positive impact on medical practice.
Sandrine Veillet is Vice President of Global HCP Product Management at Aptus Health
