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.

OPENING: Pharma companies are starting to embrace digital marketing forced, in large part, by changes brought on by the pandemic. There is, however, a difference between an evolutionary move to digital and a revolutionary move to digital. Digital marketing is becoming a valuable tool. But the reality is, health care relies on significant in-person engagements, and digital is only one part of the equation.

COVID-19 has disrupted traditional healthcare person-to-person communication and accelerated digital options, such as telehealth and remote patient-clinician contacts, digital therapeutics that deliver remote patient monitoring, and interventions through the use of software. But is this really the future? Medscape conducted some research in May to find out.