A patient-centric approach to marketing
*How to use online patient communities to deliver vital marketing insights *
By on Mar 14, 2011How to use online patient communities to deliver vital marketing insights
Long-term brand successthe goal of every biopharma companyis harder than ever to achieve as power shifts from physician to payer, with the patient playing an ever-larger role.
Cost constraints abound in markets around the world.
The traditional pharma models short-term focus on deploying large numbers of reps to drive prescribing is no longer viable.
Pay-for-performance models are generating more attention, as payers look to adopt pricing models linked to economic benefits delivered by a drug.
True added value, and not simply safety and efficacy, is now required for market success.
The ability to use a patient-centric or outcomes approach to show that products and technologies offer value will be essential for success.
With the shift of influence from the voice of the physician to the voice of the patient, as delivered through the payer, we need to understand real-world patients as thoroughly as we understand physicians.
Key questions include: What drives the patient to the doctor?
Will the political voice of the patient support access to therapy?
Which specific therapy issues relating to treatment satisfaction need to be addressed?
What behavior change can positively influence adherence? (For more on patient-centricity and adherence, see It's time for patient power to get real.)
Armed with answers to these questions, we can develop market access and marketing strategies aligned with payer and patient needs.
The role of online patient communities
An innovative approach is to use tailored online patient communities to deliver vital insights.
These capitalize on the special value that such communities possess in providing patient support, fostering patient dialogue, and collecting rich data on intervention successes and patient outcomes.
It forms a closed-loop system, meaning that data collected can provide vital disease and therapy insights and help companies to determine where best to allocate resources going forward. (For a podcast on closed loop marketing, see Closed Loop Marketing in a Multi-Channel Environment.)
The end result is an opportunity to maximize the commercial potential of brands, build evidence that supports value-based pricing, and generate a variety of clinical, economic, and marketing benefits. (For more on value-based pricing, see Is value-based pricing an aid to market access?.)
What evidence is there that this closed-loop model works?
Quintiles approach is anchored to five integrated capabilities.
First, creating custom-built communities of target patients.
Second, using evidence-based program design to collect research data.
Third, driving patient interventions, based on patient program branding and using appropriate channels.
Fourth, gaining intervention feedback and real-world data based on surveys.
Fifth, using multi-stakeholder communication to drive marketing strategies that resonate with all stakeholders.
In a traditional sales and marketing approach, gathering frequent, dynamic feedback from all of those stakeholders would be virtually impossible (and financially impractical).
Feedback from online patient communities has a positive impact on clinical trials, economics, and marketing that can touch all key stakeholders.
Payers can capitalize on improvements in patient care, while gaining a better understanding of a products behavior under real-world conditions.
Physicians can make more efficient use of their time, thanks to patients who are better educated and more likely to access and adhere to appropriate therapies.
And patients enjoy better health outcomes by being better informed and sharing their experiences with patient communities.
Morna White is practice leader, commercial strategy for Quintiles.
For more on patient-centric marketing, join the sectors other key players at Market Access & Launch on May in Berlin, Customer Centric Marketing on June 27 and 28 in Philadelphia, and the 11th Annual Marketing Europe conference in November.