Pharma: Trends and Uses Of Mobile Apps and Digital Marketing

DRG Digital - Manhattan Research's Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2017 study asked 2,784 U.S. physicians across 25+ specialties about their use of emerging technology, how they find information and make decisions, and what they want from pharma companies. The aim of the study is to help marketers refocus their digital efforts on what works and plan more effective multichannel campaigns.

Lead analyst Kelly Pinola comments,  "Pharma needs to dial down the promotional messaging and lead with valuable educational resources in order to regain physician trust. The good news for pharmas is that there’s an opportunity here for them to differentiate themselves as truly user-centered organizations, since this is a problem we’re seeing across the industry.”

Three key findings for marketers are highlighted in the infographic.

According to FiercePharma Marketing, "Digital ad spending last year was just shy of $60 billion, with pharma accounting for about $3 billion of that, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual ad revenue report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers" (read "Mobile Ad Spending Up, But Pharma's Share Remains Small"). Here's the data from IAB/PWC from which this conclusion was drawn: ...

As patients continue to grow more comfortable in a digital world and more savvy about their health care options, pharmaceutical manufacturers are changing their sales models, according to a recent study.

Best Practices, LLC, surveyed 39 digital marketers at 30 large and small pharmaceutical companies to examine the most effective marketing strategies, identify innovative approaches and look for trends. “Key Trends & Innovative Activities in Biopharma Digital Marketing” included use of mobile and social media, wearable devices, electronic records and digital customer service models. 

“Pharmaceutical companies have to meet the growing number of educated patients who are out in the digital world,” said Cameron Tew, who heads research services and business operations for Best Practices, a North Carolina-based research firm. “What we’re seeing is the business model has changed quite a bit. They’re not sending in a single sales rep with that one product. Now, it’s a much broader group of people who are working at the provider level or educator level and talking more about the science of their products.”

The survey included 13 companies with 2014 revenue of more than $10 billion, such as AstraZeneca, Merck and Novartis. The balance of the companies surveyed had less than $10 million in revenue for 2014, including Biogen, Abbott and Baxter.

The study showed that the top three marketing channels for healthcare providers are e-marketing, e-presentations and point-of-care apps that allow health care providers to use mobile devices to check medical history or develop treatment plans based on patient needs.

My Presentation from Athens looking at 5 things digital can do to revolutionise pharmaceuticals (with a bit of Gil Scott Heron thrown in for good measure)

New communications technology has the potential to both disrupt and enhance the pharmaceutical industry, but research shows that pharma often needs to up its game when it comes to the adoption of new technologies.

Mobile devices have transformed how we access and consume content, and are poised to make similarly huge changes to the way consider our health (read “The mHealth App Market is at the Saturation Point”; http://sco.lt/5thWGv). mHealth revenue is projected to reach 26 billion by 2017, and the number of health apps has doubled in just the past two years. Social is also likely to have a major impact in the way that pharma communicates in the coming years. 52% of physician’s surveyed by Deloitte in this research expressed interest in communicating with pharma companies via social media.

However, pharma currently lags behind other verticals for using social media. Pharma spending on digital advertising is far below that of other industries, and it still conducts most of it’s communications with physicians via traditional channels. There is big potential for new communications technology to make the pharmaceutical industry more efficient and more engaged with it’s customers. This infographic from Deloitte shows the potential for new digital technology to allow pharma to market itself more effectively.

Global pharma company Takeda is another example of a leading company that is pursuing new applications of digital technology to develop solutions to the challenges facing healthcare, both here in Japan and around the world.
 
Takeda and its “Start-Up Incubator”
With more than 30,000 employees, a presence in 70 countries and products across a wide range of therapeutic areas, Takeda is constantly looking for new ways to bring new value to patients as part of its patient-centric culture. One of these ways is its approach to digital strategy and technology.
 
Takeda has embedded digital strategy into its DNA with a model it calls the "Takeda Digital Accelerator”," designed to provide investment to new ideas that apply key customer digital trends to the healthcare space, with the goal of generating patient-centric innovations that can drive stronger outcomes. Its foundation is in digital experimentation, where new ways of thinking and working are discovered by testing and learning.
 
First, Takeda assembles the teams and resources needed for this experimentation to take place. Then, different teams work on small, local challenges, which they test using specific hypothesis. These findings are then incubated and shared acros the Takeda community, where other teams can leverage them.
 
Another way this Digital Accelerator model works is through the global ecosystem of external partners Takeda has built over the years. These partners are also helpe make recommendations and solutions to healthcare challenges, and the findings are incubated, tested and shared across the larger network.
 
This kind of forward thinking helps Takeda identify, explore and experiment with new ways of digitizing the healthcare experience in ways that ultimately benefit patients.