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Educating patients has always been one of the major challenges of HCPs. What might be the best way of educating them is still, to this day, a question that is very much open to debate by most Pharma Companies. But one axiom stands clear that this is the age of digital technology and what better way to create awareness than via digital media?

2021 is characterized by an explosion of the new age media and as the days go by, going online seems to be the smartest decision a firm could make. The year sees the number of internet users at its zenith and figuratively, there isn’t an end in sight. A recent study posted on techjury.net revealed that an average user spent 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media in the year 2020 and that Facebook had taken the prize as the most popular social media app, costing people an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes each day!

 So quite naturally, it would seem that making that long-overdue Facebook account just might be the answer to the problem. And what do you know, it just might be that simple.

Pharma companies, in an attempt to connect better with their customers, can consider the option of not only starting consistent handles and pages on popular social media websites but also collaborating with mobile application firms and other healthcare groups with an online presence, in order to create interactive, user-friendly experiences for their clientele. In what was the first initiative of its kind by a pharmaceutical company, Pfizer collaborated with patient advocacy groups to launch a photo-sharing initiative using Flickr and encouraged chronic pain patients to share photos representing their pain and to tell their stories. Quite interestingly, the campaign also used Facebook, Twitter, and a social cause site Care2 to empower patients to share their feelings using their preferred channels.

In the advent of such initiatives taken by leading pharmaceutical companies, it is only common for certain miscalculated choices to be made. It is certainly a possibility that the companies may not always hit the right notes when it comes to the ever-changing online trends. But via patient-centric models articulated by the same firms, they can always seek to get back up and try again, and this time by collecting the valuable data from their previous mistakes as it is easy for the company to forget that there is more to a person’s well-being than just a pill they may take for their condition.

There are always many aspects such as social factors and quality of life that must be considered when developing a patient/customer-centric model. Understanding what patients’ expectations are and what good outcomes mean to them must be of paramount importance to the firms as it is through such things that a company really succeeds in forming a healthy and affable relationship with its customers. Such a relationship will in turn benefit the patient as he/she would then have a clearer understanding of and much more confidence in what they’re dealing with.

Interestingly, research shows that those patients who are most committed to their treatments have three things in common: A) their condition matters to them, B) they take it seriously and C) they value their doctor’s recommendations. “Mobile health technologies, electronic health records, and online patient engagement platforms are driving improved patient engagement like never before,” says David Avitabile, founder, Mana. “I think technology, more than anything else, is the most successful pathway.”

While the discourse of how pharma companies can best inform their patients on products and healthcare and form amicable, understandable relationships at the most social of levels still rages on, it would be wrong to side-line the equally important discussion of doctor engagement in these trying times when the world is desperately trying to recover from the severe blow dealt by the coronavirus.

Quite notably, doctors and pharma companies have been faced with some common challenges, most of which they might have to battle together. The economic pressures that such firms can take during current times are becoming ever so apparent with some of the latest challenges that have arisen. Doctors do not wish to meet up with medical sales representatives while also being equally reluctant in setting up physical diagnosing events. The latter of which brings an unassuming feeling to patients as they now aren’t convinced enough of the amount of face-time they share with their doc.

Questions like “Without enough face-time, how do I measure doctor engagement? Or “What are the ways of aggregating doctors with digital portals assets where they can prove their thought leadership and interact with patients and do biz?” are frequently asked.

A unique takeaway rate like 'doctor engagement score' is created and measured by different interactions that a doctor does with digital assets, and people. For example, if you are running a launch campaign, has a doctor opened your email, clicked on SMS, viewed content, accepted an invite for virtual e-detailing, picked up a call by the medical representative, time spent on call, etc can be mapped as a unique journey for doctor and set up experiments to understand which create better doctor engagement score.

Pharma Companies