Pharma: Trends and Uses Of Mobile Apps and Digital Marketing

Several new apps are making it easier for doctors and patients to conduct clinical trials.

A blog about pharmaceutical marketing and advertising written by PharmaGuy, a constructive critic of the industry.

In this 2.5-minute audio snippet, Pharmaguy contemplates how big drug companies can get hundreds of thousands of 'likes' on Facebook but score very low among patient groups worldwide. Only 25% of patients, for example, think pharma marketing is ethical. A case in point is Low-T direct-to-consumer advertising.

Listen here.

For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a digital pill — a medication embedded with a sensor that can tell doctors whether, and when, patients take their medicine.

The approval, announced late on Monday, marks a significant advance in the growing field of digital devices designed to monitor medicine-taking and to address the expensive, longstanding problem that millions of patients do not take drugs as prescribed.

Experts estimate that so-called nonadherence or noncompliance to medication costs about $100 billion a year, much of it because patients get sicker and need additional treatment or hospitalization.

How can companies increase their sales using pharmaceutical sales tools? How does gamification get involved? Sales stacks benefit from microlearning and games

BURLINGTON, Mass., Oct. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The pharmaceutical industry's traditional approach to market access is failing to meet the informatio

In the largest action of its kind, INTERPOL’s Operation Pangea X targeting the illicit online sale of medicines and medical devices, saw some 400 arrests worldwide and the seizure of more than USD 51 million worth of potentially dangerous medicines. Europol supported INTERPOL’s Operation Pangea with two analysts performing checks on entities against Europol’s databases. In addition, a specialist and an analyst with a mobile office and a device for forensic support were sent by Europol to Budapest, Hungary, to conduct checks on the spot.

Healthcare brands have started hopping on these social media bandwagons and are already reaping the many benefits. Social Media and Healthcare

Occasionally you can mix the old with the new and come up with something unique that works. Other times, mixing old and new results in a mismatch that falls short. KOL marketing is one of the instances where trying to apply previously successful strategies can result in walls being put up, instead of doors being opened.

Pharma marketing has entered the sophisticated and somewhat wild world of social media, and pharma often struggles to make sense of it. Recruiting KOLs online requires a different approach to that used in more traditional pharma marketing circles. For the rest of this blog, we look at why pharma is struggling to recruit KOLs online:

#1 Looking in the wrong places

It’s harder to identify and pin down key opinion leaders these days than it used to be. KOL marketing relies heavily on reaching the people with the widest networks, the most influential voices, and the strongest credibility. These people, however, often don’t have the traditional roles that pharma once took for granted.

They are not necessarily the traditional health care providers or leading physicians in a given field or area of expertise. Neither are they always to be found among renowned academic speakers or skilled medical journal writers.

For many pharma companies, these changes represent a switching of the goal posts. The change leaves them floundering and they struggle to keep up with different marketing strategies.

A blog about pharmaceutical marketing and advertising written by PharmaGuy, a constructive critic of the industry.

The pharmaceutical industry is showing a growing appetite for investing in cell therapy companies worldwide.

The good news is that there's lots of opportunities to differentiate from competitors on delivering a better experience.

What is digital marketing and why is it important for your pharma multi-channel marketing mix? Learn why digital strategies are your key to success.

After hitting 3 key goals, GlaxoSmithKline’s PARADE could help change data collection.

Innovative data technologies are providing new ways for pharma marketers to get more for their digital advertising, website, and email dollars in 2018.

Apple, Fitbit, Samsung and Verily will join Johnson & Johnson and Roche as part of the FDA digital health pilot pre-certification programme.

The results of exclusive research with people seeking health information online in the US, UK and Canada should be a wake-up call for pharma, says Richard Meyer.

The results of a recent survey with over 16,000 people looking for health-related information suggest that pharma companies need to review their digital marketing capabilities. The data come from research with responders in the US (n = 9,544), UK (n = 3,674) and Canada (n = 3,285).

Here are some topline findings.

(1)    Regarding the search for online health information, most were confused with the depth of information found and spent a lot of time trying to better understand and confirm it. Among the key complaints were that health information was too hard to understand and that some of the information was outdated.

(2)    Pharma product websites were only seen as resources for the drug, not as resources for health information. In addition pharma companies did not update their content enough, especially when treatments were in the news.

(3)    The number one online site mentioned was WebMD but the vast majority of respondents (71%) said they went to multiple websites to get all the information they needed.

(4)    Social media was becoming more important in the search for online health information, with people looking for information on the experiences of others with certain treatments, along with ways to save money and work with their insurance companies to get a prescribed/recommended treatment.

(5)    Women went online for health information more than men, although they only went online when there was a trigger (i.e. upcoming appointment with doctor, or diagnosis).

(6)    Respondents did go to pharma websites to review medications, but also went to competitors’ sites. Their choice of treatment was often based on cost and benefit versus side effects, as it related to quality of life.

(7)    Even though direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising is not permitted in the UK or Canada, online health information seekers still used the Internet to visit pharma websites. (...)

Some of the (US) respondents were chosen for an in-depth follow-up conversation via phone call to better understand their biggest concerns with healthcare. The US respondents’ number one concern was the rising cost of health insurance, with a majority saying that it was eating into their compensation. In fact, some said that they wouldn’t leave their current employer because they were afraid of either losing insurance or paying more for it with a potential new employer.

In probing this issue to better understand attitudes towards insurers, people were happy to expand on this subject. Essentially, they felt that their health insurers were not treating them like customers and were dictating treatments too much. For example, one woman had to wait 60 days to try a new multiple sclerosis treatment, which meant she had have 60 days without any treatment. “I’m the customer,” she said. “What the hell am I paying you for?”

The biggest frustration with the US healthcare system was the inability to share medical records with a variety of physicians. Patients believed that their medical records were THEIR property and wanted them to follow them if they moved location or visited specialists.

In Canada respondents reported that the overriding issue was the time it could take to see a specialist, which could be weeks or months. Some said that they had crossed the border into the US in order to see a specialist sooner.

The moderator for this research and our data analysts consistently observed that “people seem to be getting lost in the search for healthcare information” and that they “often look to their doctor to help them sort it out”. They felt as though they were not visible in a system that, they felt, treated them as a number rather than as a person who had a lot of questions and anxiety...