Report gives insights to address gaps in HCP engagement

Pharmaceutical companies find themselves out of step with the demands of healthcare professionals (HCPs) in a number of key ways relating to the supply of medical information, according to multi-stakeholder research conducted by digital medical publisher EPG Health.

Following a rapid rise in the importance of digital channels for pharma-HCP communication in recent years, the report sought to identify new and preferred pathways for engagement, and shortcomings in the industry’s evolving approach.

Titled The Gaps Between HCP Demand and Pharma Supply of Medical Information, it contains 65 pages of insight, with recommendations aligned to:

• Medical content
• Evolving channels
• Scientific meetings
• Websites
• Digital capability and maturity
• Resource, roles and collaboration
• Beyond the pandemic

Quantitative and qualitative data was gained through surveys with HCPs, pharma and service providers, and interviews conducted with pharma executives by partnering with Impatient Health.

Among its key findings, the report found that pharma is lagging behind when it comes to digital maturity and the industry is therefore committing significant investment into developing its own websites.

However this effort goes against the stated needs of HCPs, who believe that pharma should instead focus more resource on independent websites, the research found. It was revealed that 82% of HCPs consider independent websites critical or very important sources of scientific information, with less than half feeling the same way about pharma-owned educational websites.

The report also identified what pharma companies see as their biggest challenges when it comes to digital HCP engagement, with 77% responding that they face “major” difficulty with providing real value, 67% with demonstrating HCP / patient outcomes and 63% struggling to provide an effective customer experience.

The report was launched by EPG Health, the publisher of independent HCP education platform Medthority (www.medthority.com) which is award-winning for its digital user experience. Via its platform, EPG Health aims to overcome the challenges of HCP engagement, with a focus on easing the discovery of valuable medical information to support better outcomes for all stakeholders.

Readers have found the research report to be of significant value, with 96% rating it as good or excellent on topic relevancy, 92% saying the same about its credibility and trustworthiness and the same proportion welcoming its depth of insight and coverage.

Perhaps most importantly, 70% of readers said they actioned some specific takeaways after downloading the report.

To gain further detailed insights, download The Gaps Between HCP Demand and Pharma Supply of Medical Information from the EPG Health website.