Harshit Jain, MD, is Founder & Global CEO of Doceree, a leading global healthcare marketing platform for programmatic messaging to HCPs.
As life science marketers adopt digital targeting and personalized messaging into their brand strategies, it’s critical to reach healthcare providers (HCPs) in decision-making moments in the clinical workflow to change prescribing behaviors. Agencies can provide better guidance for pharmaceutical manufacturer clients looking to drive conversions by building a better understanding of digital POC platforms as a messaging channel.
How Did POC Messaging Become Important To Brand Strategy?
Electronic health records (EHRs), telehealth and e-prescribing platforms have fundamentally changed how prescribers interact with patients. Clinical workflows moved off paper charts and physical prescription pads into these POC programs after the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) was enacted. The HITECH Act pushed HCPs to adopt EHRs to improve the privacy and security of healthcare data using financial incentives, and now 96% of non-federal acute care hospitals and 78% of office-based physicians use electronic records in the U.S.
On average, primary care physicians spend 36 minutes using an EHR per patient visit. From looking at a patient’s medical history to writing a new prescription, POC programs not only hold the attention of prescribers but also provide an opportunity to share relevant messaging with these key decision-makers at critical moments of care. Owing to the changes in office policies during the pandemic, pharmaceutical brands can no longer solely rely on field-based reps to educate HCPs about the latest innovative treatments. Using HIPAA-compliant technology, messages can be triggered based on patient-specific data and HCP specialty, making POC messaging a prime channel for reaching prescribers in real time and at scale.
Reaching HCPs with information to augment patient care can significantly influence prescribing behavior. In fact, a 2022 Doceree study showed that trigger-based POC messaging drives 32% more script lift. Although patients also use POC platforms to engage with their physicians, it’s the HCPs who have an active role in decision-making when it comes to treatment choices. By providing information about patient affordability resources, better care plans and available clinical trials directly with HCPs, pharmaceutical brands can impact patient health outcomes.
Why POC Platforms Are More Than Just Another Inventory Source
When used correctly, POC platforms can allow agencies and brands to build people-centric campaigns with high levels of personalization. Using advanced algorithms focused on optimizing message delivery based on HCP specialty, clinical indicators and prescribing behaviors, a campaign on POC platforms can deliver precise targeting, which ensures messages are delivered in the right context. Because there are so many EHR, eRX and telehealth platforms available, it can become cumbersome to build campaigns specific to each available technology. Combining purchasing power by aggregating inventory from multiple POC platforms can give a brand the full picture of the target audience across fragmented workflows and streamline campaign planning, management and measurement.
POC platforms aren’t simply just another inventory source. This channel warrants a dedicated strategy to effectively reach the right HCPs at the right moment. By treating POC messaging with the importance it deserves, life science marketers can bring their holistic campaign strategy to a new level of sophistication.
Brands and agencies that are new to POC messaging strategies should be cautious when looking for partners in this space. Some programmatic partners bundle POC messaging into general media buys. This tactic can inflate reach numbers to look impressive on a spreadsheet, but the impact of budgeting POC channels along with other delivery methods can dilute the strategy’s impact. Automatic bidding is usually spent on cheaper channels that reach HCPs outside of critical moments of care.
Detailed and transparent reporting is critical for understanding how POC messaging is impacting prescribing behaviors. Metrics like script lift and prescription renewal rates are valuable insights for your life sciences clients. When evaluating the effectiveness of a POC solution, media buyers should investigate how vendors plan to report reach. Is POC messaging folded into other messaging channels or is there transparency about which EHR, telehealth and eRx platforms messages were delivered on? Can the partner verify the national prescriber IDs exposed to specific campaigns in regular reporting? Accuracy is critical to ensure that dollars aren’t wasted.
POC Messaging As A Core Part Of Your Life Sciences Marketing Strategy
Using POC messages to deliver highly targeted and contextually relevant messages to HCPs at the moment of a crucial clinical decision enhances the relevance and impact of the overall brand strategy. POC platforms offer a significant opportunity for life science marketers to reach and influence prescribers, but to truly see the benefits of this strategy, POC shouldn’t be bundled along with other messaging channels.
Continuously optimizing marketing approaches based on real-time data and taking a forward-thinking approach will help ensure that POC messaging remains a powerful tool in your agencies’ toolbox. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and machine learning will continue to transform POC platforms and how pharmaceutical manufacturers reach their target audiences at critical moments of care. These technological evolutions will enable brands to deliver even more targeted and impactful messages to HCPs. Staying up to date on the latest trends and continuing to devote time and space to this dedicated channel will be key in the decades to come.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Read the full article here
