Author: disrupting.healthcare

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Pharma Marketing

How to attract seniors into Medicare Plan? Use digital channels!

Digital health has no age limit. According to the recent research, seniors are keen to use digital channels to manage their healthcare.

Seniors in the Internet

Accenture research reports that Medicare consumers are frequently (at least once daily) online. Ninety-one percent are using email frequently and 73 percent frequently search the Internet. Nearly one-third frequently login to Facebook or other social media sites.

This data comes in par with the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to this research,  Internet use rates tripled among seniors (65 and over) and doubled among 50 to 64 year olds between 2000 and 2012. The highest growth in Internet use among all age groups during this period was among seniors 65 and over.

Broadband for Seniors kiosk (Photo credit: Mosman Council)

eHealth and Digital Channels for Seniors – Reality versus expectations
The 2013 Accenture Consumer Survey on Patient Engagement covered more than 9,000 adult consumers in nine countries, including about 200 US seniors. It shows that 67% of Americans 65 and older say that accessing their medical information online is very or somewhat important.
Overwhelming majority (83 percent) of US seniors thinks that they should have full access to their electronic health records, but only 28 percent actually does today. Similarly, 70 percent of survey respondents said they believe it’s important to be able to request prescription refills online, but only 46 percent can do that today.

In addition, according to the Consumer Survey on Patient Engagement, 62 percent of seniors believe it is somewhat or very important to be able to book appointments online. Over half (53 percent) say it is somewhat important or very important to email with providers, what is sadly possible only for 15 percent of surveyed seniors.

Baby Boomers and GenX-ers are getting older, too.
It is not only Accenture that points out an increasing importance of digital channels in healthcare for the seniors. Global Social Enterprise Initiative at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and Philips conducted a study for Aging Well: Next Generation Tech Roundtable.
This survey results are based on responses from a sample of 1,200 Americans aged 34 to 67, weighted to reflect a nationally representative profile of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) and GenX-ers (those born between 1965 and 1976).
By 2020, an estimated 118 million Americans, or almost 40 percent of the country’s population, will be older than 50. This generation moving into this next phase of life has embraced technology and believes in its ability to help keep all of them healthy and living independently as they age.
A majority (73 percent) of all respondents declared a preference for aging at home, and almost all (more than 90 percent) said being independent and having access to quality healthcare would be important to them when they reach retirement.

Baby boomers and GenX-ers use technology frequently. Nearly seven out of ten respondents (69 percent) report a high level of comfort with technology. The level of comfort increased among younger respondents, with 75 percent of GenX-ers reporting a high level of comfort, as compared with 62 percent of “leading edge” baby boomers, or those born before 1955.

Two-thirds (67 percent) of both baby boomer and GenX respondents said they would be willing to spend between $25 and $499 per month on technology if it would help keep them at home as they age, and 13 percent said they’d spend more than $500 per month for such technology.

According to Bill Novelli, a professor at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business in Washington, D.C., and member of the Philips Aging Well Think Tank, these results reveal a huge opportunity for the healthcare industry as older people are far bigger consumers of healthcare than younger people.

Unfortunately looking at their parents experience, in the Philips/GSEI study as both Gen X and boomers feel that their aging parents (age 60+) are not utilizing technology as well as they could.

  • 53 percent of boomers and Gen X believed it would be a good thing if their parents used technology more with 45 percent stating that it will help them stay better connected with friends and family.

  • Boomers and Gen X want their aging parents to utilize monitoring technologies, such as home health monitors (45 percent) or security systems (43 percent). However, only 17 percent are using home health monitors, and 12 percent have a security system.

  • 40 percent of boomers and Gen X said their parents think technology is “too hard” to learn. Respondents point to the fact that the time involved in learning to use a device and fixing potential problems discourages use.

Call for action for the healthcare industry

“Just as seniors are turning to the Internet for banking, shopping, entertainment and communications, they also expect to handle certain aspects of their healthcare services online,”

– said Jill Dailey, managing director of payer strategy, Accenture Health.

“What this means for providers, and health plans is that they’ll need to expand their digital options if they want to attract older patients and help them track and manage their care outside their doctors’ offices. As the digitally engaged senior patient population continues to grow, healthcare systems need to consider the role the Internet can play in making healthcare more convenient for patients of all ages at every touch point,”

– Dailey added.

“For people to live independent, fulfilling lives in their own homes and communities as they age, technology must continue to become easier to learn and use while also being better integrated with adjacent technologies, including patient care,”

– said Bill Novelli, distinguished professor of the practice, Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and member of the Philips Aging Well Think Tank.

Conclusion

Healthcare providers who want to attract and retain older customers have to keep in mind growing importance of digital channels, eHealth and mHealth solutions. They are important not only as marketing tools, but also as a technology that curbs costs and helps people live better lifes while they are older.

Current status quo leaves a lot to improve. Both Accenture and Philips/GSEI research show that the demand for new technologies comes from current seniors and two generations that will become senior by 2020.

 
 

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Pharma Marketing

New guidance for pharma advertising from FDA

In the new draft of “Guidance for Industry – Product Name Placement, Size, and Prominence in Advertising and Promotional Labeling” FDA addresses usage of prescription

English: Logo of the . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

drugs proprietary names in promotional materials and labeling.
The guidance that is intended to replace its previous version from January 2012 describes requirements for product name placement, size, prominence, and frequency in promotional labelling and advertising for prescription drugs. It also clarifies the regulatory requirements and articulates the circumstances under which FDA intends to exercise enforcement discretion for the use of proprietary and established names in promotional labeling and advertising. The new guidance:

  • Clarifies issues about intervening matter in relation to the juxtaposition of the proprietary and established name;
  • States that FDA intends to exercise enforcement discretion regarding the requirements surrounding the use of the established name on pages or spreads and offers an example of what is expected;
  • Clarifies the requirements regarding the use of proprietary names in the running text;
  • States that FDA intends to exercise enforcement discretion regarding the established name’s presentation in columns;
  • Removes the recommendation that the established name be included in the audio portion of an audiovisual promotion; and
  • Clarifies issues relating to the established name’s presentation on Web pages or electronic screens.

The new FDA policy is that:

  • Firms should include the established name at least once per page or spread where the proprietary name most prominently appears.
  • The established name should be placed either directly beside or below the proprietary name without any intervening matter.
  • The size of the established name should be at least half the size of the presentation of the proprietary name wherever the established name is required.
  • For superimposed text that is equivalent to a headline or tagline, the established name should be presented alongside the most prominent presentation of the proprietary name in audiovisual promotional materials.
  • For electronic and computer-based promotion, the established name should accompany the proprietary name at least once per Web page or screen, and this should generally be where the proprietary name most prominently appears on the Web page or screen.

Industry can submit comments on the draft to the FDA before January 21, 2014. According to the FDA there are 400 companies that will be affected by the change.
While the update of the guidelines may suggest high importance of the topic, the data says otherwise.  In the last 15 years, according to the law firm Hunton & Williams LLP, FDA has sent fewer than 20 warning and untitled letters for human drug and biologic products in which the presentation of a product’s established name was considered violative. In almost all of these cases, the inadequate presentation of an established name was one of the last violations discussed in the letters, signaling its relatively low degree of importance compared to other issues, such as overstatement of efficacy and minimization of risk.

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Pharma Marketing

Chad Strider in Bupa's mockumentary for diseaese awareness and prevention advertising

Chad Strider is a spoof character of mockumentary “Born To Walk” created as a core of the cardiovascular prevention campaign. Behind the campaign is a private healthcare company Bupa. Bupa services include health insurance and other funding products, hospitals and primary care centres, chronic disease management, home healthcare, dental centres, prevention and workplace health, and care services, including residential and nursing homes and retirement villages.
The “Born To Walk” campaign promotes free walking app, Ground Miles, which aims to inspire people around the world to walk more. The app is made in cooperation with World Heart Federation.

Ground Miles app by Bupa promoted by Chad Strider, Source

It is Bupa’s first-ever global digital marketing campaign and it has really cool, tongue-in-cheek style. A short, 3:50 video shot in Hollywood, tells the story of ‘Chad Strider’, a character who believes he is the world’s best walker. It follows Chad’s ridiculous life story in a classic Hollywood rise and fall from grace.

The film was created by Hometown London advertising agency.

“We really pushed Bupa out of their comfort zone with this campaign but they continuously surprised us by embracing and championing some brave and challenging content. Developing this character and campaign has been a joy. I hope this is just the first step on a long road for Chad Strider.”

– a founder and creative ditrector of Hometown London, David Gamble said
The film is being promoted through a centralised media-spend, as well as through social media, digital marketing and PR activities.

“We want to inspire millions of people around the world to walk more. ‘Born to Walk’ does this with a tone and edge that I think will surprise and engage people and get them walking.”

– said Carol Baubock, global brand and corporate marketing director, Bupa.
The campaign is really nice, although after the first successful video with more than million views, a followup gathered just few hundreds of clicks.

Bupa marketers should work more on the placement of the campaign in the social space. Unfortunately sharing YouTube content in other networks is not as successful as creating channel specific content could be. Still those are just few first steps of Chad Strider and Bupa on its way to digital marketing proficiency. Good luck!

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Pharma Marketing

FDA asks 23andme to stop marketing of unapproved test and device

After months of negotiations, FDA finally lost patience and sends a warning letter to Google-backed 23andme, a genome testing company. 23andme was marketing its saliva based genetic test device and the test (Personal Genome Service) itself without an obligatory marketing clearance.

23andMe (Photo credit: brendanlim)

 

What FDA’s letter means

The letter is very direct and harsh and its tone, reminding Mrs. Anne Wojcicki, the founder of 23andme, that FDA really tried to help:

More than 14 face-to-face and teleconference meetings, hundreds of email exchanges, and dozens of written communications, we provided you with specific feedback on study protocols and clinical and analytical validation requirements, discussed potential classifications and regulatory pathways (including reasonable submission timelines), provided statistical advice, and discussed potential risk mitigation strategies

The letter is the final warning. If 23andme fails to cease its marketing activities and provide a plan to align itself to the regulatory demands, FDA will start a regulatory action without further notice. These actions include, but are not limited to, seizure, injunction, and civil money penalties – FDA warns.
At K-Message, we usually praise innovation, courage and development of new ways of dealing with complicated problems. 23andme could be a hero of our story. But Mrs Anne Wojcicki‘s approach is hard to support.

FDA’s concerns

FDA’s main concern is, as specified in the letter, a potential risk of negative impact of the often alarming test results coming from PGS. False positive or false negative from the PGS may affect actions of the people. Someone who was falsely informed that has high risk of breast cancer (BRCA mutation), can undergo prophylactic surgery, chemoprevention, invasive screenings and last, but not least will suffer tremendous psychological stress.
On the other hand, false negative may lead people from the risk groups to ignore prevention at all. Another dangerous part of 23andme service is informing about personal reaction to the drug. It produces a risk of “self-managing” therapy and lowering adherence to the therapy prescribed by real HCP. Such non-compliance may lead to serious risk of illness, injury and even death, as in the FDAs example of wayfarin, popular anticoagulant or “blood thinner“, which may cause internal bleeding if overdosed.

Problems with 23andme technology

23andme technology is far from being bulletproof. The assumptions it bases on, the links between particular genes and diseases are not really mapped and confirmed in regular clinical trials on big samples. Even Mrs. Wojcicki admits, that her goal is to gather a test sample big enough to  falsify the assumptions on which results are presented to the patients.
But it is not only about state-of-knowledge about human genome as today. Even the software that generates PGS results can mislead patients, as described in this personal story “My deadly disease was just a bug”. It also happened, that 23andme simply mixed the samples and 96 of its users recveived data od someone else, who just had a bad luck to have his/hers saliva on the same testing  plate.
It does not make Mrs. Wojcicki any more apologetic though.

Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki of 23 and Me (Photo credit: dfarber)

Right to know, but what?

The problem is, Mrs. Wojcicki often diminishes such concerns. She said once, that the main concern of doctors is that her service generates “non-billable, educated questions“. When the Agency first warned 23andme together with other gene testing companies in 2010, Mrs. Wojcicki’s line of defense was freedom to know information about your own body.
FDA has nothing against testing itself and having this knowledge available. The problem is that the knowledge has to be true and not misleading. As Mrs. Elizabeth A. Mansfield, director of personalized medicine in the F.D.A.’s medical device division, said to NYT, the agency agreed that people had a right to their genetic information.
The concern, she said, was that 23andMe was also providing interpretations of what that data meant medically. Some commentators, that come more from a tech than pharma tend to see the conflict between 23andme and FDA as “new vs old” clash.
We believe it is not the case this time. It is rather good ol’ regulatory action against dangerous false claim in healthcare, or even quackery. 23andme does not offer substantial evidence to support the reports provided to their clients. Their often misleading information can lead to health risk, and therefore FDA has to intervene. It has nothing to do with freedom of the information, as the information is too often false and affects really important matter.
 

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Pharma Marketing

Abbott EPD: the first digital marketing only launch in pharma

Abbott‘s Low Dose HRT brand was launched in the first in the pharmaceutical industry digital marketing only campaign. According to the press release published by PMLive, the campaign for based in Basel, Switzerland, Abbott Established Pharmaceuticals Division (EPD) was the first new-product launch to be delivered solely via a digital channel for the pharma industry. We cannot say whether or not it was really the first digital-only launch in pharma, but we understand that Abbott EPD is satisfied by the results.

Abbott logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Campaign reached to 9,000 doctors who engaged with Abbott’s Low Dose HRT brand via British online professional network Doctors.net.uk. This equates to 45% of the NHS population of obstetricians and gynaecologists, and nearly 23% of GPs. Please note that it is not clear whether those were the specializations of the HCPS who received Abbott’s message.
According to Abbott EPG, the brand’s market share has increased and there has been a continuous month-on-month growth in sales in 2013 as a result of the campaign, which included interactive case studies, clinical paper summaries, and an ask the expert section.
The decision to try a digital only product launch via Doctors.net.uk was made following research conducted by Abbott, which found online professional networks can provide a more effective method of engaging with doctors than traditional sales and marketing channels. They enable them to take a more targeted and measurable approach, and to deliver a mix of promotional and educational messages in a way that really benefits doctors’ clinical practice.
More than three million physicians use professional online networks worldwide and statistics from Doctors.net.uk show that 59% of them visit these channels specifically to update their medical knowledge; while 38% do so to get information on new products.
Abbott is already very active in the digital space, and it co-operated with doctors.net.uk  before. 2013 PM Society Digital Media award for the best HCP website was granted for their Femoston Conti Low Dose Microsite made by Doctors.net.uk.
Ajay Mann, Commercial Marketing Manager for Abbott EPD, commented to PMLive:

“The results speak for themselves. The coverage and frequency of the campaign exceed current national call rates by sales reps. What pleases us the most is our increase in market share and continued sales growth. Doctors are coming back to the website, indicating that they find it a valuable resource.”

At K-message we praise courage of Abbott’s digital pioneers. However we doubt some of the claims from the release. In particular, it is hard not to get growth in market share after launch of the product. Even if you sell one dose of the medicine, it will be 100% percent more than nothing. Secondly, we would be very careful with stating a positive impact of sales of any campaign, without a benchmark or a sample. What would happen if Abbott’s launch got traditional detailing instead of digital? Sure the reach of the campaign would be initially smaller and it would reach the target group bit later. After all not every HCP is visited on the regular basis. Nevertheless, we cannot guarantee that those approached by field force would not increase sales more than those who only read a website. We could also imagine, that a combination of digital and traditional would be even more efficient. We just do not know, as it is not clear what would happen with a different set of tools.
To summarize: we believe in the efficiency of digital approach. But we would be far of saying it is the only and the best way to launch a product.

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Pharma Marketing

How Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) changes pharmaceutical marketing in the U.S.?

Will Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) change the pharmaceutical marketing in USA? According to Dorothy Wetzel, founder and Chief Extrovert at Extrovertic there are three ways it will.

English: Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As Ms. Wetzel explains in her “Three ways ACA (Obamacare) changes pharma marketing” post at Pharmaforum, Obamacare enforces on the US market a new reality. The three main points are:

  1. It’s a payer-patient world

  2. Multicultural marketing is mandatory

  3. Value takes center stage

Let’s take a look at the points raised by Dorothy Wetzel.
What does payer patient mean? In the US after ACA HCPs will lose the power to decide which medication should be prescribed. This role will be taken first by payers (insurance companies) who will set strict rules on reimbursement. Secondly, physicians will be obliged to follow their employer’s policy, and most of the HCPs is employed by hospitals or networks of practices. Third, but not less important point is that patients as co-payers will be more careful on what medication is chosen and prescribed.
What it means for pharma marketers in the US is that instead of focusing mostly on HCPs, they will need to coöperate with Market Access teams to gain support of payers. Whenever possible it will be also worth to use DTC marketing, which is still allowed in the US.
Multicultural marketing is something that Big Pharma is familiar with, however up until today global campaign meant “everywhere but US”. Now, also US-based Pharma marketers will need to speak different languages, and Spanish will be the first to learn quickly. Due to social inequality in the United States it is estimated that almost half of newly insured Clients of ACA will come from multicultural communities. For them Pharma has to speak their language, using specific cultural codes. It may also mean that we need more diversity in the field force as well.
The third point raised by Ms Wetzel is value as the center point of the message. This is absolutely clear, taking into account the payer getting more decisive power. Pharma has to prove that the product provides enough benefit to be worth to reimbursed by the payer.
It is worth to note, that this changes, although very impactful for the US market, are actually bringing it closer to the other markets, especially EU, where role of the payer is already very important, and regional campaigns are performed in many languages with different cultural factors in mind.

 

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Pharma Marketing

GSK selects WPP GO Team for advertising pharma antacid brands

GlaxoSmithKline (Photo credit: Ian Wilson)

WPP’s GO Team is the new agency-of-record for advertising of two GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) top antacid brands.
GO – an alliance between Grey and Ogilvy – will provide integrated consumer communications, including TV, print and digital advertising, for GlaxoSmithKline’s antacid brands Tums and Eno.
Previously Grey was agency-of-record for Tums and Ogilvy was agency-of-record for Eno. The new combined account will be led out from New York, leveraging Grey and Ogilvy offices internationally.
GO’s strategic insights into the category played a large part in the selection, according to Anna Humiecka, global marketing director, GI Health, GSK. She also mentioned the team’s “compelling creative ideas and strong resources and talent”.
Available in eight varieties, Tums is the best-selling antacid in the US. Eno’s main markets are Spain, India, Mexico, Asia, Australia, UK, Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, South America, and Hong Kong.
The GO Team is part of WPP Team GSK which operates a portfolio of WPP companies working with GSK.
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Pharma Marketing

[Pharma] Marketing with Meaning in Pecha Kucha format

Dose of Digital presents Pecha Kucha on Marketing with Meaning in relation to Pharma Marketing. Enjoy the video and slides below!

 

[slideshare id=2375211&doc=jmr-petchakucha-v3-091029082022-phpapp01]

 
 
 
 

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