Consumers have access to more healthcare information than ever. Here\u2019s how pharmaceutical companies can better understand the way people make decisions about their care.<\/p>\n
Consider the following:<\/strong>\u00a0a 25-year-old, healthy male notices he is developing itchy, scaly patches of skin. He has not experienced anything similar before, so he goes online to do some research. Soon, he finds photos and descriptions that seem to match his symptoms and decides he has psoriasis. He pores over content in patient forums and reads strong views on which medications work best. He then makes a doctor\u2019s appointment, and when the physician prescribes a typical ointment, he asks to be prescribed an injectable biologic instead, even though the physician feels his case is mild and is unsure his insurance company will reimburse the biologic.<\/p>\n
Most\u2014if not all\u2014physicians practicing today in an outpatient setting have had similar experiences. We live in a world in which people naturally turn to their smartphones to look for price comparisons while shopping for electronics. It is similarly natural for them to seek information about their health the same way. One in twenty Google searches is now for health-related information<\/p>\n
For the pharmaceutical industry, this presents a challenge. The traditional commercial approach based on mass-media advertising, hefty sales forces, ready access to physicians, and relatively uninformed patients is falling short. In particular, companies are failing to engage with patients in the early stages, when they look for information about symptoms. For example, a recent YouTube search for \u201cpsoriasis\u201d produced among its top 100 results not a single branded video made by a pharmaceutical company. The first two videos had close to 500,000 views each. To connect with patients when they are looking for answers, pharma companies need to design a new approach based on an understanding of patients\u2019 experiences and how they make decisions.<\/p>\n
Most pharmaceutical marketers are familiar with the concept of conducting market research to create a \u201csales funnel\u201d as a guide for marketing programs, where patients move in stages from product awareness to product purchase. Often, these use a linear or sequential logic to represent patient behavior. In the retail industry, that linear journey has been augmented in recent years by the consumer decision journey (CDJ), which recognizes that in a world where consumers are empowered by information, the process involved in making a purchase is much more iterative (for more, see the article which revealed the concept, \u201cThe consumer decision journey<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0McKinsey Quarterly<\/em>, June 2009).<\/p>\n
CareFlows are an important new concept for helping pharma companies play a meaningful role in the decisions patients and healthcare providers make about care, ensuring their marketing tactics and offers are targeted, dynamic, and effective. Once companies are committed to understanding them, the next imperative is to reshape their commercial approach accordingly\u2014something that is likely to require a reallocation of marketing focus and investment. In a digital world, they will be a crucial element of any successful commercial strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Consumers have access to more healthcare information than ever. Here\u2019s how pharmaceutical companies can better understand the way people make decisions about their care. Consider the following:\u00a0a 25-year-old, healthy male notices he is developing itchy, scaly patches of skin. He has not experienced anything similar before, so he goes online to do some research. Soon,Leer M\u00e1s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tuyil"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2395"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2399,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2395\/revisions\/2399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tuyilpharms.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}