The landscape for the American physician has become increasingly challenging, something we believe digital and technology innovation can help address. The opportunities to communicate directly into their workflow, aid in treatment decisions, and increase the efficiency in patient communication can all be improved with smart digital moves. This month, we will look at some of those innovations and the applications they have for physician messaging…
EHRs have reached 90% HCP Adoption, with average use of 4 hours per day, according to healthit.gov. This means the EHR system presents an “An unprecedented opportunity to introduce value-based marketing programs to specific audiences in the workflow of their healthcare experience” according to DHC member, Hudson Plumb, SVP at Heartbeat.
Used correctly, integration with an EHR allow pharma to provide content that can assist a physician in correctly identifying patients who may benefit from new therapies. In addition, the EHR system can make it significantly easier for a physician to push educational content to the identified patient set.
To get you started, Hudson offers some key steps to evaluating how you can best jump into the world of EHR 2.0:
Dan Stein, SVP at Crossix, points out “this is a very exciting time for physician targeting because a lot of the infrastructure that has been built to support consumer targeting can be leveraged for reaching physicians. Physicians are consumers and you can treat them as people.”
We asked DHC member and closerlook Chief Creative Officer, Ryan Mason, to give his perspective on how digital innovation is being applied in physician messaging. He had this to say:
“We are excited and encouraged to see digital innovation enhancing our collective ability to assess what HCPs find to be relevant and then deliver more relevant content and communication to them.
For example, digital analytical tools and techniques allow us to intelligently apply metadata to HCP interactions—both personal and non-personal–so that we as marketers have a meaningful understanding of what messages HCPs engage—not just what tactics or channels they engage.
We are also able to offer more relevant content to HCPs based on the time they have available during the day via email, websites and paid media by customizing communications based on day part and local time. Not only do HCPs appreciate this combination of relevance and convenience, it allows brands to engineer more engagement out of the significant investment required for content and tactic creation in our regulated industry.
And finally, we are seeing the promise of digitally-enabled relevance come to fruition across communication channels as well. Our ability to better recognize HCPs in non-personal channels and then create more meaningful, more relevant experiences through multiple channels—in professional networks, paid media, websites, email and sales representative interactions—has become achievable at scale with the maturation of marketing intelligence and digital experience platforms and their adoption by pharma.”
In-Office Technology Advancements such as interactive wallboards now allow physicians to engage patients in meaningful dialogue accompanied by customized education materials. Physicians can email a discussion summary or relevant screen shots directly to the patient.
Traver Hutchins, a 2018 Inductee to PM360’s Elite List for his role as a health media expert and entrepreneur, explained “as point of care evolves from a physical location to wherever there’s a connection between provider and patient, so too has the technology providers can deploy—and the opportunities for brands—to enable richer engagement and better outcomes. For example, providers may now leverage interactive exam room touchscreens inside their practice—complete with 3D anatomicals that can be annotated and sent home with patients—as well as personalized, HIPAA-secure communication platforms designed for pre- and post-visit engagement to increase patient comprehension and adherence. As we look to the future, providers will insert technology into other key apertures before and after a face-to-face interaction with a patient, opening up further avenues for brands to be part of patient-physician conversations.” You can hear more from Traver in his role as Chief Growth Officer at PatientPoint in a video interview available now.
