By Harshit Jain MD, Founder & Global CEO, Doceree
LinkedIn: Harshit Jain
LinkedIn: Doceree
Healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing has undergone a major churn over the past few years. Largely due to the evolution in point-of-care (POC) messaging, we’ve seen interactions between healthcare providers (HCPs), patients, pharma brands and their marketing representatives become more fruitful for everyone involved. Backed by the rapid digitization of POC platforms, HCPs are now spending considerably more time than before switching between Electronic Health Record (EHR), e-Prescribing (eRx) and telehealth solutions in their quest to deliver value-based care to patients. And with healthcare institutions also adopting these solutions as mainstays of clinical workflow, it is more important than ever for pharma brands — and their marketing partners — to master engagements with HCP and patients within this ecosystem to ensure adequate exposure for their offerings.
POC messaging has many other benefits, including enhanced compliance through improved script conversion, and ultimately reduced hospitalization through the promotion of value-based-care. In all this, the halo effect of POC messaging also sees improved patient relationships with the brand. Each year, millions of patients switch pharmaceutical brands due to healthcare advertising at their point-of-care. A study, commissioned by The Point of Care Communication Council, revealed that 68% of patients asked for a brand that they had been exposed to in POC marketing, while 65% indicated that they were more likely to switch brands after seeing POC messages.
The Intricate World of POC Messaging
While it may sound easy, the route to achieving mastery over POC messaging is fraught with challenges. It is necessary to understand the correct time, place, and context for interactions — especially with HCPs — or you risk seeing your POC messaging efforts not reap any rewards.
This is because even the most finely crafted POC marketing strategies, and their consequent messaging, sent at the wrong time, place, and to the wrong HCP, are bound to either be ignored or worse, find themselves leaving the intended recipient irritated. The latter is something that can have disastrous consequences for a pharma brand, including loss of reputation and of course, monetary losses arising from the failed marketing effort.
Understanding the Walled Garden
A classic case of this is promotions displayed during EHR login pages often being confused as POC messaging. The two serve very different purposes, with one capable of leveraging the power of AI and big data for contextually relevant and hyper-personalized messaging, while the other serves a much simpler function of just increasing brand visibility – often to the detriment of the brand and its marketing campaign itself.
An easy way to understand this distinction is by thinking of this as a walled garden where the POC ecosystem lies completely within the bounds of this hypothetical space protected by HIPAA guidelines that act as walls protecting all allowed to enter inside.
HCP-patient interactions, and the flow of sensitive data related to healthcare decision-making across the various points of care, including EHR, eRx, and telehealth platforms, are all protected by HIPAA guidelines that shield this data from unwanted eyes.
The only point of entry and exit into this walled garden is through a door, the EHR system login page. Outside this door, the HCP has no access to the patient or their health data, and as such is not in a place to make any healthcare decisions. Since the HCP is outside their clinical workflow at this stage, it can even be argued that any message nudging them towards taking healthcare decisions is inefficient to the ultimate decision-making process, and as such can be considered as an irritant spam message. Even if it isn’t spam, any promotion running outside this walled garden should certainly not be confused with POC messaging.
Proof in favour of this argument lies in observed higher script lifts using trigger-based POC messaging. Sample this: Script generation is about three times higher in trigger-based POC messages than in other online channels of messaging, like promotional banner outside EHR login pages.
Inside POC messaging
As such, it won’t be wrong to say that if a pharma brand or a marketer is attempting to share POC messaging with HCPs or patients, the only place it can be done is inside this hypothetical walled garden, or in medical terms inside the HIPAA protected ecosystem of digital solutions that form the clinical workflow of an HCP. However, even when a third-party solution or a healthcare marketer manages to enter this ecosystem, a scattergun approach to messaging can cause serious trouble for them.
This is because once inside the POC ecosystem, an HCP’s sole focus is on providing quality care by achieving positive healthcare outcomes for the patient. At this stage, any message that does not add meaningful value to the healthcare delivery process only ends up serving as a distraction for the HCP and a roadblock in the path of providing value-based care.
Getting POC Messaging Right!
To avoid this, pharma brands need to ensure that they partner with marketing platforms that can deliver personalized messaging within an HCPs clinical workflow. Another thing to ensure is that these are HIPAA-certified marketers who can leverage the power of big data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning to deliver hyper-personalized and contextually relevant messaging at important junctures of the POC cycle.
By its very nature, any such messaging will enable the HCP to work towards the goal of providing value-based care to their patients, helping them achieve improved patient outcomes and enhance the overall experience of availing healthcare services for patients.