SUMMARY: Quantitative and qualitative data was gained through surveys with EPG Health’s multi-stakeholder databases (HCP, pharma, and service providers) and interviews conducted with pharma execs by Impatient Health. The objective was to identify new and preferred pathways for the creation and delivery of medical information.
Category Archive: Marketing to health care professionals
SUMMARY:
- A survey of more than 4,000 physicians showed that virtually every physician uses social media for personal reasons, while two-thirds use it for professional reasons.
- 86% of diagnostic device companies, 65% of pharma marketers, and over half of biotechs use social as a critical part of their marketing mix to reach HCPs.
- Doximity was flagged for having anti-vaccine information.
- HCPs don’t necessarily want pharma trying to sell products via social media.
- The best approach is to use social media to connect HCPs to clincial information and drug trials.
SUMMARY:
- 62% of HCPs spend 3 hours per day accessing digtal resources.
- More HCPs chose to use smartphones to access digital resources as well and usage has increased when accessing a wide variety of professional content.
- HCPs increasingly turn to trusted colleagues on digital networks for reliable information.
- Source: Build Relationships and Personalize Your Interactions With HCPs (Wolters Kluwer)
SKIMMERS SUMMARY:
- Health experts, including those on an external advisory committee to the FDA, are skeptical that Biogen’s drug will even successfully slow the progression of Alzheimer’s after late-stage clinical trials yielded mixed results and are angry the FDA approved the product.
- The FDA’s recent approval of aducanumab (Aduhelm) shows just how badly the agency has failed the public.
- In late April, the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee reviewed six accelerated approvals — a provisional pathway — involving a group of cancer immunotherapies where clinical trials had failed to confirm that the drugs extended survival or improved quality of life. Yet, in four of the six cases, the advisory committee voted to keep the accelerated approvals intact. (source: Medpage)
- In response to the FDA’s approval, three members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee who opposed approval of the drug quit the panel in protest.
- Physicians are signaling that they now want to see the “complete date” regarding new drug approvals.
Key Points:
- Trust in the CDC and FDA has decreased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic among health care professionals, according to a new WebMD/Medscape poll.
- Out of nearly 450 U.S. doctors surveyed in the same time period, 77% said their trust in the CDC has decreased and 48% said their trust in the FDA has decreased.
- Health care professionals have been critical of these agencies’ decisions during the pandemic, with some concerned that their work has been politicized and now with advisory panel members resigning as a result of the terrible decision to approve Biogen’s drug you can bet that HCPs are going o want to see a lot more clinical data.
SUMMARY: Several online providers promise that they can reach physicians with your message, but I would argue that numbers are only important if they can be measured against key brand objectives. Ask your target audience what THEY use and how they use it to understand each platform’s relevance.
SUMMARY: Doctors said they were dissatisfied were marketing emails (46%), telephone sales calls with sales reps (42%), and both webinars and websites (each at 39%) from pharma companies, according to Indegene. That should, however, not discourage the use of email to HCPs. If you follow some basic testing, email can be an effective tool for communicating information.
QUICK READ: Reaching physicians with key brand messages isn’t hard, but the online landscape has become crowded with many players. By far, Medscape is still number one in physician reach, and medical journal advertising has been proven to result in more branded Rx’s.