ISSUE 4
S POTLI G HT O N ...
M E D I CAL C O M M U N I CATI ON S I N 2017
Inspiring audiences. Motivating change. Thinking beyond. COUCH MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS ©2017. All rights reserved.
www.wearecouch.com
Medical communications | 1
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR 2016 was certainly memorable, but now we look ahead and discuss our hopes for what 2017 may bring for the industry. For this issue of S POTLI G HT O N… we are looking at strategies and tactics the industry can better utilise, and what we feel can improve engagement in medical communications. This year our focus is on giving a voice to all involved in healthcare, how is this achieved? We discuss in this issue. I N TH I S I S S U E, WE COVE R: veryone can be given a voice. When it comes to diagnosis, treatment and condition E management, the voices of all those involved – pharma, H C Ps and patients – need to be heard. S o it’s important that care processes and services are designed in such a way that every party can be included, listened to, and can feel like they are in control. Luckily, you can achieve all of this through co-design, also known as co-creation. argeting for real people. We’re all aware how difficult it’s becoming to reach T H C Ps through traditional marketing methods. In fact, recent research is showing that physicians are seeing less than 3 0% of reps who try to meet with them. S o maybe 2017 is the year to forget tradition and strengthen your engagement strategy by making it more targeted. deeper look into patient behaviour. In 2016, we’ve discussed patient behaviour A in great depth, and we’re hoping that the conversation will continue into 2017. With a topic as complex as this, there is always more to discover, understand and address. ersonalised approaches. Personalisation is predicted to be a hot topic in 2017 P across many industries, including pharma. But what sets pharma apart from the rest is that the level of personalisation is required to go much deeper. With this in mind, we pondered what would be the simplest way to create a personalised experience. etter information is clear information. When it comes to providing patients B with information, clarity is vital. Lack of clarity can lead to patients forming their own conclusions if information can be easily misunderstood, which in this industry, can be quite dangerous! Within this in mind, I hope you enjoy this issue and as always I would love to hear your thoughts. You can email me ash@wearecouch.com or tweet me at @ash_rishi. Till next time.
Ash Rishi Managing Director C OUCH Medic al Communic ations
IN THIS ISSUE Patient co-design Stronger engagement strategies Understanding patient behaviours Personalisation Deliver better patient information
PATIENT CO-DESIGN As the demand on health services increases, there’s an ever more pressing need for three-way medical communications between pharma, HCPs, and patients. Part of this need stems from the pressure on existing services, but an equally large part comes from the fact that patients are now better educated about their medical conditions and treatments than they were in the past. Patients want to be involved in the care process, to feel listened to, included, and in control. Co-design helps pharma and healthcare professionals find ways to involve patients in their treatment, prevention, management, and understanding of the illnesses and conditions that beset them. Gaining deeper understanding of the patient journey through every stage of an illness also allows for more meaningful marketing interactions, as well as streamlining and bringing about practical changes in the everyday patient experience with drugs and services.
4 | Medical Medicalcommunications communications
C ONNECTING CLINICAL PRIORITIES WITH HUMAN NEEDS No treatment or health care plan can be said to be truly patient-centric if it doesn’t involve the patient’s thoughts, opinions and ideas from the outset. Co-design takes into account the perspectives of both the patients (or service users) and the professionals who deliver them. It creates a platform for shared responsibility, but does not move patients towards total selfmanagement without medical care, or undermine professional, clinical expertise. Conducted properly, co-design opens conversations between care designers and the end users. These conversations can change priorities, focus minds, and ultimately build stronger, more trusting relationships between pharma who produce the drugs, the clinicians who administer and prescribe them, and patients who use them.
PATIENT-CENTRICITY Patient-centricity has become something of a buzzword, but it should be much more. Co-design, or co-creation as it’s also sometimes called, breathes life into the phrase, showing how pharma take medical communications with patients seriously: that they actually ‘walk the talk’, understanding problems and improving services and treatments. Talking to patients can have many benefits to pharma, including: CREATING REAL CONNECTIONS WITH PATIENTS: not just offering drugs or treatments, but demonstrating understanding of patient’s feelings that can lead to isolation, especially in cases of rare or chronic illness.
www.wearecouch.com
CREATING EMPATHY: pharma and patients are at opposite ends of the same pole, and co-creation can help them bridge the divide, bringing insights into each other’s contribution to treating and managing disease or illness. CREATING ONGOING INTERACTION: co-creation isn’t a one-off exercise but an ongoing collaboration that involves patients at all stages of treatment, from diagnosis to recovery.
C O-DESIGN COMPLIANCE Building trust with patients requires a high degree of authenticity in both attitude and practice, so co-design needs to be, and is, compliant. Involving regulatory and legal teams from the outset of the co-design process is vital so compliance underpins efforts to include the patient’s voice in building future care solutions. When approached from this standpoint, pharma can see itself as a services company as much as a drugs supply company. As well as considering new drugs and strategies, the co-design process and community involvement creates a mutually beneficial foundation that brings customers and suppliers together to find new pathways that make things better. As more healthcare practitioners and providers engage in co-creating services with patients, medical communications between all parties — HCPs, patients and pharma — will form an important part of treatment. Co-design ensures all voices are heard, not just those of the ‘professionals’, and gives pharma a wider understanding of public healthcare and health service needs, guiding them to develop drugs and treatments that make a real difference.
Medical communications | 5
STRONGER ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES For many pharma companies it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach HCPs with traditional marketing methods. But that doesn’t spell the end of the familiar close relationship between pharma and their first lines of contact. It just means the goal posts are in a slightly different place, and a few changes in strategy are needed in order to gain better engagement through targeted medical communications.
I NFORMATION OVERLOAD Recent research indicates most pharma marketing is still shooting towards the old goal posts, in that they’re not actively maximising the digital opportunity. The same research highlighted that doctors today estimate they spend around 84 hours a year dealing with pharma through nonpersonal channels. This works out to around 64% of their pharma interaction time, with 26,000 of the most popular prescribers on the receiving end of 2,800 pieces of communications every year from the pharma industry. Time pressured physicians have cut down on the number of face-to-face meetings with pharma sales reps. Research data from sales
6 | Medical Medicalcommunications communications
and marketing firm ZS indicates that far fewer physicians have time to meet with sales reps, resulting in many now seeing less than 30% of those who try to arrange meetings with them. Clearly, medical communications must develop a fresh approach, with more emphasis placed on multichannel marketing efforts, delivering carefully crafted messages that build and maintain physicians’ trust. Despite the fact that the survey analyses indicate that around 75% of physicians don’t entirely trust pharma marketing information, an (almost) equally large percentage (around 65%) indicate a willingness to interact with pharma through social channels.
C RAFTING THE RIGHT MESSAGE Thanks to online social interactions, patients are better educated about their own health conditions, and this newfound knowledge changes the way they communicate with HCP’s and navigate their personal patient journeys. When pharma also understands that patient journey, they have a framework that can shift the focus from the product to the patient, and so create medical communications that are more patient focused, and therefore more helpful to physicians. Deeper understanding of the patient journey allows pharma to: Co-design effective patient support systems Get closer to patients through storytelling Recognise the patient needs, from initial symptoms through diagnosis to treatment and medication.
B ETTER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH PERSONA DEVELOPMENT Customer personas are the secret sauce. Done correctly, they’re incredibly powerful mines of information that can sharpen medical communications to achieve pinpoint accuracy. One set of personas to cover all segments of a customer base, however, isn’t enough. HCPs deal with customers from all walks of life and at all different stages of their patient journey.
www.wearecouch.com
What’s needed is a persona for each segment that represents the customer at that particular journey stage, and which thus meets the need of the HCP to guide the patient through the stage at which they come together. This can only be achieved with research that delves behind the clinical, into the realms of human needs and emotions, problems and challenges. Personas should represent real people more than they reflect groups of statistics. Instead of promoting only products and solutions (which HCPs are already overloaded with) in nonpersonal communications, pharma can demonstrate patient empathy. They can become sympathetic guides to HCPs, recognising the moment in the patient journey when their product is most helpful.
E NGAGING THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE PERSONAS In creating real people personas that go beyond statistics, pharma can also discover where those actual people can be reached: Which medical journals they read Which forums they populate Online networks Which social media platforms they use Other places they turn for information Knowing where HCPs look for information is also key to presenting medical communications in the right format so they’re read, heard, understood, and remembered at the exact time they’re needed.
Medicalcommunications communications || 7 Medical
UNDERSTANDING PATIENT BEHAVIOURS Understanding the behaviour of patients: the why, where and how they do things as well as the reasons that prevent them doing those things, is key to successful medical communications. In today’s connected world, patients are bombarded with information, much of it no more than a rehash of information they’ve seen many times before regarding health and illness. Communications is, therefore, far more effective when it delivers something new, something the patient (or potential patient) hasn’t seen before. This is especially important for those people who have conditions that are not yet diagnosed. The majority of patients who request information or medication from their doctors following exposure to marketing messages, already know they have the condition the medication treats. Reaching those in pre-diagnosis stages (estimated at up to three quarters of those with certain conditions such as bipolar and depression) offers pharma a large, currently untapped pool of potential new customers.
8 | Medical Medical communications communications
But beyond the benefits to pharma, better public health on a wider scale is also achievable because when conditions are diagnosed in their early stages, the prognosis is often brighter. Designing medical communications that reach the heart of patient behaviour patterns, however, needs a less traditional approach. Delving under the surface, into the mind set and attitude that prompts any behaviour is necessary in order to effect behaviour change.
I NFLUENCING BEHAVIOUR FOR BETTER HEALTH In order to influence and change behaviour, pharma needs to understand and address the habits and mind sets that cause patterns of behaviour: What motivates patients? Which external factors need to come together to encourage patients to take up services or treatments? What habits or emotional responses need to change in order to redirect patient behaviour? Here are four aspects of human behaviour that drive actions, build habits and influence ideas and attitudes: R EMOVING BARRIERS. Even very small barriers can prevent patients accessing treatment. Barriers exist in all areas of life, and are often external to the patient. Simple things like transport availability can prevent someone attending a support group, for instance. Not being able to quickly find information on a website can induce patients to give up the search for help or education for a condition or medication.
www.wearecouch.com
B UILDING MOTIVATION. Medical communications can be used to reinforce a patient’s intrinsic motivation towards better health, boosting self-esteem through positive values, and recognising and celebrating small milestones. By understanding what motivates their target market to achieve their goals, pharma can design communications that underpin positive values. THE SOCIAL ASPECT. By encouraging social connections, pharma can subvert the growing sense of isolation that besets many people with some health conditions. Being connected socially to others can lead to more timely treatment when it’s needed, induce positive behaviour through a sense of belonging and helping others. It encourages people to share knowledge and give support. S ELF-BELIEF. If people don’t believe they can do a thing, they probably can’t, so lack of belief in one’s own capabilities or abilities can quickly lead to abandoned health plans and a return to old, unhealthy habits. By providing tools that allow patients to record and document achievements and progress, pharma could encourage adherence to treatment programmes or fitness routines. Incorporating behavioural approaches in medical communications can include information on support groups, social networks both face-toface and online, community initiatives, and fitness programmes. Getting undiagnosed patients to recognise and seek help with worrying symptoms is one thing. Encouraging them to then change the behavioural habits that lead to ill health, and maintain that change in the long term, takes an entirely different brand marketing strategy - one that understands aspects of behavioural science.
Medical communications | 9
PERSONALISATION Real personalisation comes about through understanding the needs of your audience. It takes deep listening in order to truly grasp the difficulties they face, taking in data and information from diverse sources that may include statistics as well as the results of surveys, questionnaires, and face-toface interviews. When all this information is synthesised through accurate analysis, the equation between patients, healthcare providers, and pharma, balances. Medical communications should address the needs of the target audience more than the needs (or end marketing goals) of pharma.
C OMMON GOALS, COMMON GROUND With a typical working day running at around 12 hours, GPs don’t have much spare time to engage with pharma representatives or read branded medical information. In fact, statistics reveal that branded pharma materials are not accessed on a regular basis. And yet, doctors still need to read up on medical matters to stay abreast of drug and treatment innovations, and pharma still needs to promote their goods and services. Both sides of the industry are offering what the other needs, and yet they’re often like ships passing in the night, close but not actually connecting. This disconnect provides an opportunity for pharma to do better.
10 | | Medical communications
Medical practitioners, of whom there are almost 240,000 in the UK, work in all kinds of different environments: They see patients at differing stages in their illness or treatment They’re of different ages Have varying levels of experience Have different educational needs Specialise in different areas Deal with varying demographics, some more challenging than others Have differing learning preference
We live and operate in a multichannel world, with many avenues down which to explore and find information. Personalising education and information materials by creating them to speak specifically to an audience within an identified group is the most effective way pharma can ensure they reach their target market.
A PATIENT-CENTRIC APPROACH Putting the patient at the centre of marketing activities demonstrates understanding of the challenges that face HCP’s on a daily basis, and a willingness to help them create meaningful services. Take, for instance, non-adherence by patients. It may be resistance to taking medication for fear of side effects, reluctance to adopt a new lifestyle or stick with a new diet, and can have many points of origin. It’s an ongoing problem that creates mountains of unused prescription drugs in the UK, and costs around $600 billion every year to the pharma industry. The pharma industry, with its access to data and technology, and through the creation of detailed patient personas, is ideally positioned to tackle the issues concerning adherence and non-adherence, whether it is intentional or accidental.
www.wearecouch.com
Analyses that target known areas of conflict such as this can aid pharma in the creation of customer personas built around an understanding of the issues behind non-adherence. What motivations, fears, beliefs, or priorities drive a patient to ignore or disregard a prescribed treatment programme? Devising medical communications around this issue alone would benefit both pharma and HCPs if it resulted in fewer wasted drugs and provided doctors with a fresh way to approach patient non-adherence, or a way of offering stronger patient support.
B RINGING DATA TO LIFE Personalisation represents the real people whose lives, actions, attitudes and beliefs or practices inform the bulk of statistics. Information gleaned from both primary and secondary data can be broken down into market segments to create smaller, more concise groups. Within these groups are the small details that make up real lives, complete with specific problems and challenges. We may talk about market segments and personas, but let us not lose sight of the fact that medical communications are most effective and most personal when they’re devised and written for real people in real life situations.
11 Medicalcommunications communications || 11 Medical
DELIVER BETTER PATIENT INFORMATION We all have different preferred learning methods and ways we like to access information. Even those who haven’t given the issue much thought will, if we think about it, realise we either like to see pharma content and instructions in written format, or we prefer pictorial diagrams to indicate a course of action. Most of us like a mixture of the two.
There are other aspects that either promote or hamper learning too, and these revolve around how information is presented — its format. Enough research evidence exists to make some features accepted practise when formatting printed or webbased info: Font sizes and typeface Use of headings Bold or italic text to highlight salient points Plenty of white space Judicious use of bullet points These physical aspects exist because we understand human behaviour when reading: how we skim text, how we dismiss text that seems hard to read or dense, jargon-filled or complex, for instance. One aspect of human nature that’s often overlooked, however, is the tendency to ask
12 || Medical Medical communications communications
questions and make up our own solutions if the answers aren’t clear. This human behavioural trait is of particular relevance to pharma in all marketing stages, but can especially help with the creation of patient information leaflets (PILs).
B ETTER PILS Patients read PILs like they read anything else. A quick skim down for the bits that apply to their personal situation, then backtrack to the parts that stand out. Any information that appears unclear, ambiguous, or doesn’t answer the question ‘why’ is likely to be passed over or ignored. Examples include such instructions as ‘do not take with alcohol’ or ‘always take with food’. Why? What will happen otherwise? If patients don’t see the need to follow directions, they’re far more likely to disregard them, which can exacerbate the non-adherence problem and lead to ineffective medication or worsened side effects.
C LARITY, DEPTH, AND BREADTH IN SCIENTIFIC PATIENT INFORMATION As patients become better informed on their conditions, the need for clear medical communications in PILs, grows. A recent survey conducted among cancer patients and care groups across 39 countries revealed a significant 60% of respondents complained that the science behind treatment innovations was not clearly explained. While the patients they are intended to support are aware of scientific advances, the majority of patients felt left out of the communication loop. They wanted to know more about how offered treatments worked, why they worked, and how they affected personal outcomes. Almost 55% of respondents to the survey agreed that an improved understanding of the scientific concept behind a new treatment improved a patient’s quality of life and their clinical outcome. One of the biggest barriers to patient understanding was a lack of familiarity with scientific concepts and language. Simple, clear, jargon-free scientific information that patients could access easily, such as online or through social media for example, would reach more patients.
www.wearecouch.com
P ROVIDING BETTER INFORMATION THROUGH CONTENT MARKETING The survey demonstrates the clear need for pharma to simultaneously simplify and extend the information made available to patients. But before pharma can produce the kind of content patients or their HCPs need, there has to be an understanding of the questions, doubts, and concerns clamouring for answers. A sound way of digging into the most pressing issues is by creating personas. The insights gleaned can then be used to build content marketing strategies that engage, educate, and inform. It is not, of course, a ‘once and done’ strategy. Market segment needs change, ways of accessing information appear and vanish just as quickly, changing people’s behaviour accordingly. So there’s also an ongoing need to measure, evaluate and analyse response in order to gauge content effectiveness. When the medical communications generated by pharma align with the questions being asked or concerns being raised, the result is always better information.
Medical communications | 13
14 | | Medical communications
www.wearecouch.com
Medical communications | 15
16 | | Medical communications
www.wearecouch.com
Medical communications | 17
At COUCH, we create content that responds to the known needs and preferences of your target audience, and elicits the desired response from them.
www.wearecouch.com
lfii
Š COUCH 2017.