Category: Pharma Marketing

As the pioneer in client relationship management (CRM) software, Salesforce is now one of the leading platforms offering a rich collection of products, solutions, and tools far beyond CRM possibilities. According to Fortune, Salesforce is the second most innovative company in the United States, followed by Alphabet.   

Throughout the years, Salesforce gained a reputation as a trusted advisor and partner among thousands of companies across the world’s fourteen largest industries, including life sciences and healthcare.  

In this article, we’ll explore typical cases of healthcare companies using Salesforce, review the functionality of Salesforce CRM and the solutions for different sectors within life sciences and healthcare, and discover how Salesforce supports healthcare companies and communities. 

How is Salesforce Used in Healthcare? A Few Typical Cases

For years, Salesforce’s mission in life sciences and healthcare has been the same – to be one of the main drivers for digital transformation and put relationships with organizations at the heart of activity.  

The number of cases of using Salesforce in healthcare is numerous and diverse. Professionals of all sorts use Salesforce in healthcare organizations of all kinds. Both enterprises and non-profits entered the Salesforce environment to match their needs and fulfill their goals.  

A non-profit organization that raises money to enhance the quality of children’s healthcare used multiple Salesforce products to build an advanced data-driven system based on a database of 700,000 donor prospects.  

After using Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud to track donor activity, the organizations added to the cloud CRM analytics and Einstein Discovery AI (now Einstein GPT) to get a 360-degree view of the donor pipeline and actionable insights for its optimization.  

The largest non-profit provider of behavioral healthcare in California used Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud to meet the increasing demand for mental health services and automate their workflow. The provider’s team used to spend 80 hours processing a list of potential clients. With Salesforce, they do it for 15 minutes.  

Humana, a US-based health insurance company, took advantage of a few Salesforce products at once to build a single view around their customers. The Humana team integrated with:  

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud to personalize 60 different prospect journeys and attract 1,000 interested employer leads per year;
• MuleSoft API to boost delivery speed four times;
• Salesforce Health Cloud to provide doctors with patient data, such as medical history, medications, and lifestyles;  
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud to make sure that patients receive their prescriptions at the right time.  

Lilly, an American pharmaceutical enterprise, used the Customer 360 platform to develop and launch over 50 apps to achieve a higher level of customer-centricity and improve internal coordination across departments and locations.

Salesforce CRM for Healthcare: Solutions’ Overview

Salesforce healthcare CRM is a product used by top enterprises in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and life sciences industries. They opt for the platform for high targeted care opportunities, cloud data security, patient engagement, remote patient monitoring, and many other goals.  

Salesforce implementation in health care narrows down to six sectors of activity: 

• Providers.  
• Payers.
• Pharma.
• MedTech.  
• Public Sector Health.

Every sector includes solutions developed specifically according to its needs and particularities.

Solutions for Providers 

Scale Patient Access and Services solution allows healthcare providers to receive a holistic view of patient data in a single place, including risk level, outreach frequency, contact preferences, conditions, caregivers, medications, allergies, member details, electronic health records, coverage details, care requests, cases, and engagement history. 

Also, providers can easily find and schedule appointments for patients and empower them to complete pre-visit and post-visit activities. 

Personalized Patient Acquisition & Outreach solution allows healthcare providers to generate demand and nurture relationships using marketing tools to collect and segment customer data across multiple channels, manage omnichannel campaigns on a single platform, and create personalized journeys for new and current patients based on their preferences and needs. 

With this solution, a patient can quickly find and schedule appointments, while a healthcare provider can share surveys to collect feedback on treatment and improve future experiences. The solution also includes CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud that allows care coordinators to monitor all the data in a single place to measure the effectiveness of created journeys and improve them. 

Solutions for Payers

Trusted Contact Center solution allows healthcare payers to leverage customer support and increase agent productivity with the advanced member service console powered by Salesforce Health Cloud, launch an AI-powered chatbot to simplify communication and create personalized experiences, and see all available information about each member. 

Connected Network Management solution allows healthcare organizations to ensure quality outreach by creating tailored omnichannel journeys based on the provider’s personal and professional information, such as network preferences, specialty, NPI number, and primary service locations. Organizations can use pre-built integrations to simplify credentialing, while an intuitive dashboard will help them optimize contracting activities. 

Scale Member Management solution allows different types of managers to improve their cooperation, guide members through their journey, and improve health outcomes using a complete view of the customer, which provides relevant member information such as preferences, member plans, and health timelines showing clinical and customer service events. With CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud, managers can identify high-risk members and measure care program success across member populations.

Solutions for Pharma

Enhance Patient Services solution allows pharmaceutical companies to establish closer relationships with patients and providers using a single platform to deliver personalized engagement and support programs for better adherence with automated workflows. 

With clinical, social, and adherence metrics, coordinators can receive all the necessary insights to offer patients the best actions and recommendations. With CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud, coordinators can track and monitor patients’ care plans and prioritize patients who face health barriers. 

Scale Advanced Therapies solution allows stakeholders to track the chain of custody in real time, manage sell orders, and quickly identify and deal with issues to avoid expensive delays. 

Based on patient appointment information, treatment coordinators can use pre-built and automated workflows that calculate the appropriate appointment chains to get patients scheduled faster. Laboratory technicians can easily verify patient data, record vitals, confirm cold chain complaints, and print unique sample barcodes. 

With the help of these codes, manufacturers can receive all the information they need to update the record and its status. If delays occur, stakeholders can receive actionable insights from Einstein GPT. With the integration of Slack, stakeholders can enhance collaboration, receive updates, and eliminate bottlenecks.  

Accelerate Clinical Trials solution allows life sciences companies to unite with trial teams and speed up innovations by configuring all the necessary apps and letting everyone cooperate at each clinical trial phase, such as study analysis, site selection, study initiation, and trial implementation. 

Teams can store all critical documentation, access it anytime, and share it with researchers and other stakeholders. Analytics enables every stakeholder with a complete view of every activity and empowers them with real-time updates on study initiation and subject enrollment to define the next best steps. 

Salesforce Health Cloud keeps all clinical data safe and provides the trial team with enhanced collaboration opportunities, while Salesforce Marketing Cloud personalizes emails and SMS to keep trial participants up to date. 

Solutions for MedTech

Drive Intelligent Sales solution allows sales teams that offer medical devices to connect with each other, get a complete picture of a customer, and find the best leads to close more deals faster.  

With an advanced lead nurturing system, sales and marketing professionals can engage with the right prospects by delivering the right message at the right time. They can work in one place to coordinate their actions and monitor leads, conversions, and campaigns.  

Artificial intelligence helps MedTech companies to capture events and contacts, see new opportunities, and prioritize sales efforts.  

Modernize Commercial Operations solution allows companies that sell medical devices to consolidate all data in one place, assign tasks, automate workflows, and receive insights for better decision-making. 

Working together in one place, multiple teams can optimize manufacturing and scheduling for prosthetics and implants, check product availability and prevent delays, use forecasting algorithms to analyze and improve performance, enhance document management, negotiate complex deals with intelligent quoting, and beyond. 

Optimize Field Inventory Management solution allows medical device sales representatives to view upcoming visits to medical specialists and the necessary products with automated authorization flow and intelligent sales.  

A mobile app provides reps with a comprehensive view of their product data, such as quantity, serial numbers, order amount, shipping addresses, customer signatures, and consents for billing. With a built-in barcode scanner, reps can enter product serial numbers. 

The solution can help MedTech companies manage product shortfalls, reduce discrepancies, and simplify inventory cycle counts analysis.

Solutions for Public Sector Health 

Streamline Crisis Support Coordination solution allows healthcare organizations to help patients deal with psychological health conditions, crises, and treatment by creating end-to-end journeys. 

Salesforce help crisis specialists of different levels and areas optimize their operations using pre-built tools, evaluate health risks and manage them with surveys, triage logic, and recommendations from artificial intelligence. 

Build Integrated Care Programs solution offers the same opportunities as Salesforce solutions for providers, so we’ll skip it and move next. 

Manage Health Data with Transparency solution allows local health authorities to provide advanced patient care, predict better health outcomes, and improve patient satisfaction.  

A disease surveillance app allows healthcare organizations to engage patients who address their problems online and in real time with the medical specialists they need. With an advanced command center, healthcare professionals can provide personalized care by seeing the patient’s healthcare journey, checking procedure manuals and best practices for specific investigations, connecting to department communication channels, and viewing current tasks. 

Now that you know the solutions offered by Salesforce for healthcare and life sciences companies, let’s find out more details about the communities that support them. 

Salesforce Communities for Healthcare, Certified Third-Party App Developers, and Mentors 

For companies and non-profits in healthcare and life sciences, Salesforce offers a variety of resources to learn more details about using its products and solutions. 

Trailblazer Community is a place where employees of a healthcare organization or company can connect with their colleagues who are already taking advantage of Salesforce and discuss all interested topics.  

For instance, if your team wants to know more about Salesforce healthcare automation, they can find the discussion group they need by choosing specific filters. 

IdeaExchange Community is a forum where Salesforce users share unique experiences to use products, services, and solutions more effectively, eliminate issues that occurred during their workflows, and discover something they didn’t know about. 

Also, Salesforce launched its Salesforce+, the free streaming service that highlights a long list of Salesforce offline events, which is helpful if your healthcare business is interested in the environment. For instance, if you’re wondering about the Salesforce healthcare technology roadmap, you can watch nine episodes from the Dreamforce series.

Salesforce Healthcare Benefits – Are They Real?

Salesforce has a massive impact on the healthcare system by providing everything for healthcare workers to improve patient communication, medical services, and patient experience. 

It’s so groundbreaking that, for instance, primary care physicians don’t have to see patients personally because they can access all healthcare information and nonclinical data they need, such as care journeys, patient profiles, and social determinants.

Salesforce is also a good choice for any company that works in pharmaceuticals, MedTech, and insurance. The software incorporates multiple systems powered by next-generation functionality to let a business see the big picture, increase productivity, eliminate data silos, and reduce spending.

Viseven team has certified Salesforce specialists on board. Get in touch to see how we can help with the SF product suite or integrations. 

Pharmaceutical detailing is the most time-tested marketing format in the medical content world. Old-timer sales reps should remember how pharmaceutical companies reckoned face-to-face (F2F) visits with doctors as the most effective approach to achieving their sales targets.

With the advent of digital marketing, plenty of new forms of online communication emerged and eventually superseded detailing, turning from the most fundamental method of engagement into one of many.

But as it turned out, the power of engagement doesn’t depend on the number of sources.

On the contrary, search engines and social media provided healthcare professionals (HCPs) with more information about products and trends in the pharmaceutical industry and made them fastidious.

HCPs’ constantly increasing demand for personalized experiences encouraged pharma companies to refresh their marketing strategies and use pharmaceutical detailing in a new electronic way.

After reading this guide, you’ll be able to define the main differences between detailing and e-detailing, discover the benefits of this content format in the context of innovation, and understand how to leverage its efficiency with other marketing channels.

The guide will be equally helpful to experienced pharma representatives who want to revise their knowledge of detailing and specialists who joined the pharma sales force not long ago.

Read it till the end to download a case study that contains professional content tips on presenting your pharma company and products with an engaging e-detailer.

What Is Pharmaceutical Detailing?

Pharmaceutical detailing is a marketing technique that allows sales representatives of a pharmaceutical company to promote products and services to healthcare professionals (HCPs) using a detailed presentation.

Detailing plays a vital role in the pharmaceutical industry for many reasons. First, it helps build a strong relationship between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals, providing the latter with detailed information on the latest research, new products, and so on. Pharmaceutical representatives who communicate with healthcare professionals serve as the main source of credible information, guiding them through all the available and new medications and educating them on how each can be incorporated into treatment plans.

Moreover, detailing is a way for HCPs to stay current with the latest research and understand the direction of the pharmaceutical industry. With detailing, healthcare professionals can stay up to date with new findings and trends without spending much time learning more about the pharmaceutical landscape.

Main Types of Detailing in the Pharmaceutical Industry

There are several types of pharmaceutical detailing. Let’s look at some e-detailing examples and their importance.

Academic detailing

Academic detailing is a non-commercial face-to-face demonstration of new prescription drugs by healthcare professionals to their colleagues or patients in academic medical centers.

Academic detailing has educational value. The goal of conducting academic detailing is to improve the quality and results of clinical trials, patient care, prescribing patterns, and prescribing behavior.

Traditional detailing

Traditional detailing is a face-to-face demonstration of pharmaceutical products and services by sales representatives to healthcare professionals. The goal of conducting detailing is to provide doctors with all the necessary information on new drugs and their effectiveness.

E-Detailing

E-detailing is a digital marketing practice used by pharmaceutical sales representatives to present a company’s products and services to healthcare professionals online with an interactive presentation called e-detailer.

Depending on the marketing approach, some pharma marketing specialists divide e-detailing into two categories: self-detailing and remote detailing.

In the process of self-detailing, an HCP reviews an e-detailer alone without the guidance of a pharmaceutical representative. Remote detailing is an online one-in-one demonstration of an e-detailer by a pharmaceutical representative to an HCP during a video call or webinar.

There are also three types of e-detailing, subject to the purpose of HCP engagement.

Benefits of E-Detailing for Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives

According to a survey by BCG, 84% of physicians want to maintain or increase online interactions with pharmaceutical companies.

Interestingly, the same report showed that 60% of HCPs prefer to learn more about new prescription products during an in-person visit by a pharmaceutical sales representative.

In such a hybrid communication environment, detailing is a perfect way to engage with HCPs.

Let’s find out why.

Benefit 1. Full accessibility and increased engagement

Typically, HCPs are very busy and don’t want to change their overloaded schedules or be interrupted because a sales rep needs to sell a new drug. E-detailers changed the way direct-to-consumer advertising works in the pharma industry.

The high level of e-detailing accessibility multiplies the level of HCP engagement. E-detailing creates human-oriented experiences for HCPs, eliminating sales representative obtrusiveness that might have turned many health professionals off in the past.

Now, it’s up to a health professional to decide how, where, and when to access information provided by pharmaceutical and life science companies.

For some reason, an HCP can’t attend one-on-one meetings and can use an e-detailer anytime via any device they want, like a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone, or tablet, and via any preferred channel, such as email or social media. An HCP who doesn’t mind meeting with a sales rep can view an e-detailer during a video call or after a live webinar.

Pharma sales reps can attract HCPs’ attention and create the feeling of total control over the situation thanks to e-detailing rich functionality:

• Media. Images, video, and audio help sales reps engage HCPs with an engaging story;
• Animation. Animated content looks way more attractive and engaging;
• Navigation Menu. HCPs can instantly jump to slides they like;
• References & Resources. All sources mentioned in an e-detailer are near at hand, which allows HCPs to check the authenticity of data presented in an e-detailer.

Benefit 2. Detailed analytics

One of the greatest benefits of electronic pharmaceutical detailing is that drug companies don’t have to meet HCPs personally to understand the overall impact of e-detailers on their decisions.

Being integrated with in-depth analytics in a customer relationship management (CRM) system, an e-detailer contains key performance indicators (KPIs) to collect real-time data about HCPs’ interactions.

There are several types of KPIs pharma companies can use:

• Quantitative KPIs: time per slide, the number of demonstrated slides, the order of slide demonstration, attitude towards the slide, and beyond;
• Qualitative KPIs: prescriptions, interactive surveys, and beyond.

KPIs allow companies to track any HCPs’ actions on e-detailers depending on their business goals and the e-detailing pharma software they use. Performance metrics are crucial because they help sales representatives find and improve inefficiencies in their pharmaceutical detailing strategies.

Benefit 3. HCP feedback and better customer experience

Along with information received with performance metrics, direct feedback from health professionals can improve pharmaceutical detailing strategies and pharma marketing.

One more slide with a simple feedback form added to the end of an e-detailer can dramatically increase customer experience in the future. By providing unique insights, HCPs can expand the knowledge of pharmaceutical companies about:

• The Subject of an E-Detailer. HCPs can share their professional and personal opinions on the brand, products, or any other e-detailing topic with a drug company;
• Quality of E-detailing. HCPs can recommend pharmaceutical representatives to improve the content and its appearance and find possible mistakes and inconsistencies;
• Target Audience. HCPs can tell about their colleges’ needs, preferences, interests, competence, expertise, and beyond;
• Pharma Industry and Market. Even if HCPs can say nothing about the industry and market, they may say something that would pull some suggestions out of the minds of pharmaceutical representatives.

A pharma company can also create an interactive slide for conducting a survey based on multiple-choice questions as an alternative to a feedback form. In pharma marketing, such content has enormous potential for creating more effective means of HCP engagement.

Benefit 4. Omnichannel versatility

As one of the top healthcare marketing trends, omnichannel marketing is the future of communication between pharmaceutical representatives and HCPs.

In an omnichannel environment, pharmaceutical companies combine e-detailing with other channels to create personalized customer journeys and engage with different groups of HCPs based on data analytics.

To leverage the effectiveness of the e-detailing process for an HCP or a group of HCPs with the same characteristics, pharmaceutical sales representatives and marketers identify the most preferred combination of communication channels and use them as touchpoints in a customer journey at the right time.

In such a way, e-detailing becomes human-centered, looks professional, and feels natural.

E-Detailing Best Practices + Case Study

There are several principal approaches to creating eDetailers your organization should consider.

Be careful with texts

Don’t overload the slides of your eDetailer with texts. The goal of any detailer is to support a sales representative’s pitch, not to be its basis. If an eDetailer contains too much text information, it could confuse an HCP. Use text to highlight the essential information and share the rest orally to keep an HCP focused and engaged.

Interactivity is a must

Make your eDetailer as interactive as possible. Content doesn’t attract attention without an engaging presentation. Create immersive experiences for HCPs by adding transitions between slides, animating objects, and hiding interesting facts in pop-ups and drop-down lists.

Make it as intuitive as possible

Create layouts that are easy to understand to make HCPs easily perceive eDetailing content at first glance and stick to the principle of simplicity. If you don’t know how to make your eDetailers simpler and more intuitive, show your eDetailer to your team before engaging with HCPs. After engaging with HCPs, ask for detailed feedback and track their interactions within each slide.

Read how we assisted a top 50 pharmaceutical enterprise in transforming complicated descriptive materials into an easy-to-understand interactive e-detailer. Download a concise case study to learn e-detailing best practices in more detail, present your pharmaceutical product at its best, and successfully engage with HCPs.

Professional E-Detailers for a Pharmaceutical Company Made Easy

Want to create next-generation interactive presentations with top-notch design and tailor them to the current needs of HCPs in personalized customer journeys?

eWizard, a content experience platform, enables top pharma and life sciences companies with everything needed to leverage pharmaceutical detailing in omnichannel marketing:

• Intuitive Creation. Thanks to a diverse collection of pre-built templates and easy-to-use tools, pharmaceutical representatives can create interactive e-detailers without professional coding and design skills;
• Accelerated MLR Review and Approval. Powered by modular content, eWizard allows your company to reuse pre-approved content blocks and tremendously accelerate the medical, legal, and regulatory process for e-detailing;
• Integration for any Purpose and KPI Tracking. Your team can integrate eWizard with any popular system or platform to thoroughly analyze the effectiveness of e-detailing by tracking HCP behavior on an advanced level.

Please complete the form below, and our specialists will get to you shortly with a professional e-detailing consultation.

Customer Relations Management (CRM) – three words that may sound super complicated, although many business areas have implemented different CRM approaches since the early 1970s. Nowadays, the CRM system is an inevitable part of almost any online industry, and, of course, it’s crucial for healthcare and life science. 

As the average aging of the population grows, together with chronic disease cases, the demand for medical and pharma services only increases. In the United States, 25% of people under 45 have reported chronic conditions. The higher the age, the more people require stable medical treatment — people from 45 to 65 report 50% of chronic diseases, and the largest group is people over 65 (81% of chronic cases). Such a massive number of patients requires a more advanced approach regarding patient relationships and how to manage them. 

The market researchers expect the healthcare CRM market size to reach $17.8 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) growth of more than 9%. 

This article will cover the main aspects of the best CRM for pharmacy and its benefits. Let’s go. 

What Does CRM Stand for in Healthcare?

Let’s start with what CRM is. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, which is widely used across industries. CRM tools are currently rising in popularity due to their ability to quickly store customer-related information and allow users to access it swiftly without having to go through several processes to retrieve just one document or any other details. CRM in the pharmaceutical industry plays a crucial role, as its features and abilities assist industry workers in collecting and managing various types of data, ranging from patient records to information about various research endeavors. 

Usually, pharmaceutical CRM software solutions are developed to maintain and promote positive customer experience and comfortable management. It helps to organize communication processes, keep track of operational activities, and see what works in your management approaches and what requires changes in the current health system. 

Typically, CRM allows the execution of the following activities: 

Communication

Communication with the patient is the most vital thing that healthcare can have. An uncomfortable and broken communication chain usually leads to the interruption of treatment and the potential worsening of the condition. A proper customer relations system should allow one to initiate, schedule, and manage patient appointments with HCPs, making both customer and service provider lives much easier.

Management

As the daily life of any company consists of numerous tasks, the healthcare CRM system should allow assignments or add task tickets to people, making monitoring work progress, deadlines, and updates more comfortable. It makes communication and treatment process smoother and continuous, giving better results and creating an exciting experience for the patient.

Reporting

Analytics is the next vital thing that is supposed to be integrated into the CRM. A proper report system is critical to understanding business dynamics. This feature allows every user to create and personalize various analytical reports, from marketing campaigns’ ROI to the average patient count. 

Patient Management

As any CRM system should be adapted to the business industry’s requirements, healthcare CRM software is also centered on providing specific features and technologies for patient management. A unique healthcare industry feature allows creation, updating, and segregating of patient records based on their diseases, conditions, feedback, or other specifics. Such sensitive data inside pharmacy CRM software should be stored according to HIPAA compliance. It means that HIPAA-compliant patient relationship management tool is highly protected from data breaches and malicious intruders, taking full responsibility for data security.

Key Benefits of Healthcare CRM System

As you can see, CRM software covers most parts of the daily operational routine. It significantly helps employees to handle tasks and reduces the number of human mistakes during management. However, modern healthcare CRM solutions can be more than just a customer data management tool. It brings much more possibilities to provide a better patient engagement experience and improve interaction with your brand. Here are some of the key features:

Automate Resource Management

When it comes to customer interaction, the most critical resource is time. Before digitalization, the internet, and highly complex software (like CRM platform), doctors and medical employees used a manual customer management method. It means that most of the records were kept in a written physical form which is complicated and uncomfortable to store and manage.

Nowadays, medical CRM software systems can store, analyze, and suggest the most appropriate appointment time considering location and purpose. All schedule changes are followed up with notifications and appointment reminders sent to the patients.

Improve Patient Experience

Prudent patient management is good for pharma and healthcare companies and significantly increases customer positive experience and satisfaction. Once all communication between the patient and HCP is structured, clear, and consistent, there’s no tension in getting necessary treatment or consultations.

Additionally, healthcare CRM software is a database of customers’ medical history which is also a great plus for the patients: based on their gender, birth date, the sphere of activity, CRM can notify people about taking medication on time, ask about their well-being, offer discounts, and so on.

24/7 Support

When patients suddenly address their issues, having all the treatment records at your fingertips is good. It makes it easier to provide customers with appropriate answers or medication when HCP can quickly learn about potential issues of particular customers, even if it’s beyond working hours. You can simply imagine how the patient experience affects the communication flow.

Speaking of working hours, modern healthcare CRM systems support chatbots. This technology allows helping patients 24/7 by reassuring them and sharing basic healthcare recommendations.

Patient Acquisition

A cure can not be delivered to the struggling patient if no one knows. Many aspects of a successful pharma business rely on attracting new customers and sharing your medication approach with more patients than before. A healthcare management system will be an excellent addition to your marketing strategies, as it helps to create and promote valuable content and marketing messages to the previously targeted audience. It significantly influences patient acquisition.

Also, it can store communication records and provide access to this data by request to keep the marketing campaigns as consistent and productive as possible.

Collect Feedback

Back in the offline days, most patients only had a few options to get medical help, and there was no significant need to collect patients’ opinions. Today, everyone has a few choices of how they will get their treatment just by opening a web browser, and the marketing game for pharma and healthcare companies becomes more complicated.

Feedback has become an inevitable part of every business, whether you are growing vegetables for sale, making video streams, or providing professional treatment for complex illnesses. Every customer of yours has something to say about your company’s service. Collecting this feedback will open many possibilities for improving your communication tools and operational processes.

Data Security

Any healthcare organization collects and processes a lot of sensitive patient information. It makes such medical institutions vulnerable to data breaches and malware attacks in an attempt to get this information and use it for ransom.

A proper CRM solution is supposed to assure the safety and confidentiality of user data. System administrators should set authorities and define access levels for different types of employees. A properly secured healthcare customer relationship management software won’t allow an accident or intended data breach. Such protection measures significantly improve patient engagement.

Enhanced Personalization

Recent studies show that more patients are becoming interested in healthcare organizations that can offer them some level of personalization during treatment. Data is one of the most critical elements of any process of personalizing customer experiences. With the help of CRM for the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare professionals can now gather any kind of data about their patients and use it to create unique treatments and find a customized approach to each patient that comes to them. 

Reports, Metrics, and Dashboards

Another important nuance of CRM for healthcare providers is analytics. From drug discovery and research to customer interaction, it is important to always stay on track with the current state of things. It’s not only about reporting current statistics but also about being able to analyze data dynamics. It means that you can track how your business is doing within some period of time, how satisfied your patients are, and the productivity of medical workers.

Who Can Benefit From Healthcare CRM Features?

As you can see, the idea of a CRM system is flexible to the required business needs. The healthcare industry provides different services to its customers, whether this is a pharma business that sells their drugs to the patients and healthcare providers directly or healthcare organizations like private or public hospitals.

How Does It Work?

How to Choose the Best Healthcare CRM Software?

Such various services, united under one industry, require different features and technologies for their digital environment. To make the choice of healthcare CRM software system more accessible, it is usually divided into three categories.

Here are the main types of CRM software:

• Operational, developed for marketing and sales automation, data storing, and service providing; this software is perfect for revenue teams of pharma companies, concentrated on customer communication.
• Analytical — designed for businesses to effectively manage patient data and customer acquisition and retention processes. This is good for pharma companies and healthcare organizations as it allows them to improve drug research and discovery and track customer reactions.
• Collaborative CRM is perfect for significant medical structures and health systems like public hospitals. It will enable healthcare providers and junior medical officers to collaborate effectively on specific patients using electronic health records, developing better customer service and increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

As you can see, the technical equipment of your CRM software may vary depending on healthcare business needs. Once you decide to implement such a system into your company’s daily life, there will be several options, like getting a custom solution by hiring and maintaining a development team or already prepared software with various pre-set features.

What Is the Future of Healthcare CRMs in 2024? 

The pharmaceutical CRM market is predicted to be worth 30.13 billion USD by 2023, double that of 2021 (14.70 billion USD). This is caused by the rising need for software that allows healthcare organizations to automate many workflows, boost team productivity, and organize data more efficiently. 

Apart from the continued market growth, CRM software for the pharmacy industry will likely undergo some changes in its features. In 2023, generative AI was one of the most significant trends in the pharmaceutical industry; in 2024, it will continue to be so. Combined with pharmaceutical customer relationship management software, generative AI will enhance patient-HCP interactions, increase personalization, and streamline numerous operations, among other benefits. More companies will start incorporating AI into their products, which is why most pharmacy CRM software will receive at least a few new features, or some old ones will be scrapped and changed. 

Why Healthcare CRM Is Vital to Your Business?

Modern time follows rules of comfort, the complexity of services, and effective communication. It’s hard to imagine any service, especially pharma or health systems, that won’t be using the benefits of digitalization, customer relation management, and patient data analytics.

Proper CRM for healthcare covers almost every issue connected to communication fails, lack of collaborative possibilities, or analytical engines. This will improve patient satisfaction, communication, and internal operational processes.

Reach out to the Viseven team and receive personalized recommendations for your business based on our expertise.

Evaluation of drug efficiency is a complex process that requires Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) experts to measure multiple indicators to understand the actual market value of the product. Without such an assessment, it would be too risky to launch new products into development or even enter a new market. So what do HEOR experts do for the pharmaceutical companies and what HEOR-collected data is used for?

In this article, you can find out about HEOR meaning, how it contributes to pharmaceutical research, its potential in enhancing patient treatment, what exactly these researchers do, and the future of health economics and outcomes research.

What Does HEOR Stand for and How Does It Contribute to Research?

Health Economics and Outcomes Research – is a common term used for experts who collect patient and medical data that proves the real value of the product, how it can influence the quality of life of the patient, and its capacity to compete against similar products present on the market.

As we mentioned, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) experts cooperate with different departments and teams assisting in the evaluation of the products. But what is health economics and outcomes research in the real world? There is a number of specific tasks that HEORs fulfill or contribute to that help to increase the quality of the products and, hence, the quality of treatment.

Defining drugs dosage

Even when all stages of the clinical trial are over, there are still many things pharmacists and doctors may learn after patients get access to the new treatment. HEOR serves as a link between patients, physicians, and pharmacists, collecting all relevant data to come up with the most well-balanced evaluation of dosage.

HEOR analysis of patients

The social value of the drug in increasing the quality of life is also an important issue. One of HEOR’s tasks is to determine which patient groups may benefit from the new product or a new healthcare project. In case it is proven that the new product provides effective treatment and can be made available for a vast population, it will contribute greatly to the value of a new product.

Creating health outcomes guide

The entirety of the field data collected by HEORs as well as analytical reports may provide valuable data for the Health Outcomes Guide. HEOR collects all reports about health outcomes from patients and physicians and later provides detailed analytics to healthcare providers, clinical outcomes research institutions or pharmaceutical companies.

Pricing

Pricing should be approved before clinical research of a new drug can be launched. Especially, when we are talking about most over-the-counter drugs that have more popular alternatives. HEOR’s main focus here is to define the most adequate cost for healthcare payers.

Reimbursement terms outlining

Pharmaceutical companies always need to have a plan “B” in case something may go wrong at any stage of development. The unforeseen effects of treatments among some populations of patients can also be an important concern for pharmaceutical companies since even three-phase testing can not give a guarantee that the positive health effects of the treatment will meet the initial expectations.

Marketing and product positioning

HEORs have a clear vision of the groups that should be targeted by the marketers. The data collected about the target group can tell marketers a lot about the patient’s expectations, and the desirable effect of treatment.

What Does Health Economics and Outcomes Research Do?

HEOR department plays an important role in healthcare organizations since the data collected by them provides the industry players with insights and trial data for decision-making and strategic planning.

In itself, HEOR is a suite of disciplines within health economics related to marketing, public health, and social studies. Here are the major fields that HEOR professionals are specializing in:

• Market access
• Pricing
• Reimbursement
• HEOR consulting
• Contracting & account management
• Policy & advocacy
• Epidemiology
• RWD/RWE analytics (Real World Data/Evidence)
• PRO (Patient-reported outcomes)

HEOR experts play an important role in strategic decision-making in pharmaceutical companies. For instance, HEOR-provided value and HEOR data provide evidence that allows determining strategic trends for the company – whether to develop a new product, improve and remarket the existing one, or invest in social affairs and population education.

The list of HEOR competencies includes, but is not limited to, clinical trial design, epidemiology, HEOR modeling, statistics, data mining, collecting and processing statistics and documenting real-world evidence. Also, the HEOR has to be competent in healthcare policies and financial analysis.

How Pharmaceutical HEOR Experts Impact Drugs Engineering

The development of a new product is an immensely costly and time-consuming process – frequently it takes about 10 to 15 years to finish all clinical trials and apply for a license. Since the stakes are so high, healthcare providers need to be sure that the investment made will bring profits.

So, at the end of the day, the HEOR’s major task is to make sure that the patients who get access to the new treatment will get the best health outcomes at the most affordable price. Naturally, HEOR experts take part in the pre-dev stages and assess the process at all following stages.

HEOR impact on drug pricing and marketing

HEOR professional is not strictly oriented on the cost-effectiveness of the new product or a new program, but rather tries to analyze its impact and offer additional insights. Such insights may consider the efficiency, safety, quality, or dosage of the drug. Of course, all those new drug properties are initially evaluated during the clinical trials, however, HEOR professionals may strongly contribute to the understanding of the population’s needs and expectations, and reveal real-life insights on patient access.

So, the HEOR expert helps to “humanize” the development part, introducing humanitarian value together with the key economic benefits of the future project.

Which Healthcare Providers May Use HEOR Strategy Services?

Recently, the demand for HEORs as well as the number of industry sectors that require such professionals has increased dramatically.

Here are some of the sectors that currently require outcomes research HEOR experts:

• Pharmaceutical manufacturers – companies that produce drugs, healthcare products, and medical equipment may use HEOR pharma expert’s services.
• Pharmaceutical distributors – companies that sell drugs and medical equipment may use HEOR-provided data to evaluate the expectations and offer HEOR data-based costs for products.
• Healthcare institutions – public or private hospitals, healthcare providers, and medical centers.
• Health insurance institutions – organizations that provide drugs for healthcare payers.
• Government agencies – as the healthcare system advances, more governmental institutions adopt modern standards for quality assessment and treatment research such as HEORs.

HEOR professionals help decision-makers at companies, governmental or any healthcare institutions to make informed, real-world data-based choices about the launch of new products, adoption of drugs for clinical development, analyzing cost-effectiveness or defining the market cost. With vast knowledge in economic science and recent clinical studies and all instruments for conducting own research of product-related benefits and risks, HEORs improve quality of life and have a high impact on the pharmaceutical industry today.

Types of HEOR Studies

What types of HEOR studies are there? HEOR includes these types of research studies:

• Cost-effectiveness analysis
• Cost burden
• Economic models
• Evidence generation planning
• Clinical/claims database analyses
• Retrospective chart reviews
• Patient-centered outcomes research
• Systematic literature review

What Is the Future of HEOR?

The future of HEOR in healthcare is bright, driven by the explosion of health data from sources like wearables and electronic health records. HEOR’s strength lies in turning this data into useful insights that shape healthcare decisions. It focuses on real-world evidence to understand how treatments work in everyday life, not just in clinical trials. Importantly, HEOR is making sure patient voices are heard, using tools that measure what patients truly value.

In the pharmaceutical industry, HEOR is a key player in innovation. As companies move towards personalized medicine, HEOR helps assess whether these tailored treatments are cost-effective. It’s also changing how new drugs are developed. Pharma companies now use HEOR insights early on to design better clinical trials that show a drug’s value, not just its effects.

Big data and AI are transforming drug discovery, and HEOR is central to this change. HEOR experts use AI to analyze vast amounts of data, helping pharma companies quickly understand a new drug’s potential impact. This data-driven approach speeds up development and makes better decisions about which drugs to pursue.

As healthcare focuses more on value, not just cost, pharma innovation follows suit. HEOR helps companies show that their new products, whether drugs or digital health apps, offer better outcomes at a fair price. This is crucial as the industry expands into areas like telemedicine and AI diagnostics.

Final Thoughts

In summary, HEOR’s future is tied to making sense of the data boom in healthcare. In pharma, it’s not just adapting to innovations like personalized medicine and AI — it’s actively guiding them. HEOR ensures that industry breakthroughs are not only scientifically impressive but also economically smart and truly helpful to patients.

If you are looking for a professional channel for all pharmaceutical and life science-related topics, get in touch with the experts at Viseven by filling in the contact form below.

Communication saves lives. Everything starts the moment a patient walks into the office. From this point, the success of any treatment depends solely on whether the patient and doctor find common ground. How can this happen? Let’s talk about it.

Compelling communications are quite rare between patient and doctor. Healthcare professionals must treat a diverse range of people who often feel challenged to describe concerns in medical or scientific terms. Thus, in doctor-patient communication, professionals must understand the patients’ query even when described most colloquially and vaguely.

In this article, we will discuss how to improve patient-clinician communication: basic principles, key advice, and main obstacles.

Importance of Quality Patient-Doctor Communication

Health care aims to preserve and enhance patients’ health in terms of disease, damage, functional status, and overall well-being. However, achieving these goals depends on physician-patient relationships, in which both parties’ perspectives must be conveyed and communicated effectively.

Did you know that communicative errors are a major contributing factor to hospital sentinel events? During times of emergency, there is an increased risk of poor communication between doctor and patient. It can lead to poor health outcomes and inappropriate medical care.

In an era of more patient-centered treatment and rising clinical complexity, compelling effective communication between the patient and the practitioner is more crucial than ever. Patients are the key stakeholders and should take an active part in choosing the appropriate clinical care for themselves. Clinicians, in turn, should value patients’ opinions and expectations, and give them the attention they deserve when making treatment decisions.

Nowadays, a fundamental clinical competence is understanding the importance of doctor-patient communication. How physicians interact with patients can significantly influence how they feel about their treatment and how they maintain their health outcomes after leaving the doctor’s care.

What Are the Barriers to Effective Doctor-Patient Communication?

Healthcare professionals must address the reasons for failure in communication to find effective remedies. We gathered the key barriers to effective contact between the medical practitioner and patient:

• A fundamental lack of empathy and/or communication skills. PCPs can lose sight of patient care, relying instead on methods and formalities rather than direct, honest dialogue.
• Keeping information secret. Clinical results might be significantly impacted if patients do not fully comprehend their health condition or treatment options.
• Discouraging patient participation. Ignoring patients’ pleas for clarification and/or preventing them from expressing their expectations or worries. Patients could feel powerless, which could result in treatment failure.
• Avoidance. They avoid talking when it comes to emotional or social impact. There is no use in talking about a problem if the medical practitioner believes they cannot assist their patient with it.

However, these barriers can be easily overcome by following the below-mentioned principles. 

What Are the Basic Principles of Patient-Clinician Communication?

All forms of interaction between patient and doctor require basic communicative abilities. These consist of:

• written,
• nonverbal,
• spoken influences.

Healthcare professionals can increase patient satisfaction if they have a strong balance of all these abilities. Sometimes all it takes to win someone over is the correct body language or just listening intently to what they have to say.

There are some basic conversation skills that physicians must be proficient in, like active listening, empathy, and the use of open-ended inquiries to delve into a patient’s past are a few of them. Let’s discuss essential effective professional communication skills in detail:

Connection

• Connect on a social level;
• Consider the patient’s viewpoint;
• Consciously try to suspend judgment;
• Recognize and refrain from making assumptions.

Empathy during med practice

• Remember, the patient has asked you for med assistance;
• Look for and comprehend the patient’s justifications for their actions or sickness;
• Recognize and validate the sentiments of your patient out loud.

Systematic support

• Discover any obstacles to care and compliance;
• Assist the patient in overcoming obstacles and give feedback;
• Include their family member if it seems sensible to do so;
• Assure the patient that you are and will be willing to assist them.

Partnership

• Be adaptable, discuss roles and respect each other;
• Emphasize that you will be collaborating to address medical issues.

Trust with awareness

• For certain patients not used to Western medical practices, self-disclosure may be a problem;
• Invest the required time and deliberately try to build trust.

Cultural competence

• The doctor should respect the patient’s culture and beliefs;
• Recognize that the patient’s perception of you can be shaped by preconceptions based on ethnicity or culture;
• Acknowledge your prejudices and biases;
• Identify your limitations while dealing with medical difficulties in different cultures;
•  Admit when your unique approach might not be appropriate for a specific patient.

Best Practices for Physician-Patient Communication in Virtual Consultations

A healthy patient-physician relationship depends on doctors delivering information clearly and compassionately. Effective clinician-patient communication may need to be improved in virtual consultations, which call for more clinical production while providing less time for each patient.

Nevertheless, telemedicine has become increasingly popular, especially since the pandemic. According to National Health Interview Survey:

Telehealthcare calls for enhanced communication through interviews with patients, compassionate conversation techniques, and collaborative decision-making. Successful discussion is essential to patient outcomes. A med practitioner, who fosters open conversation, can gather more detailed data, increase the likelihood of a more precise diagnosis, and permit appropriate counseling. All of these might improve medical adherence to long-term health-promoting treatment programs.

Here are some basic recommendations for doctor-patient communication in a virtual practice:

• Doctors must use patient-centered interviews and compassionate conversation;
• Doctors should encourage patients to prepare for appointments by writing down their inquiries. Patients should have a form to ask queries before the appointment. The patient’s significant interests can be discussed more easily with the help of a well-organized set of questions;
• Sessions on gender and cultural sensitivity for doctors and office workers with a communications expert must be regularly scheduled.

The Office of Minority Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed the National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services Standards (CLAS) to advance health equity, enhance quality, and assist in eliminating health care disparities. It could be wise for obstetricians and gynecologists to assess these voluntary standards.

• Hospitals can recruit non-physicians with experience doing interviews, such as med assistants or senior nurse practitioners;
• When patients return home and have had a chance to process the information from their providers, medical practitioners can check in with them again using a remote health service. Clinicians may check that patients and their families have all the required information, offer extra data, and address any issues with a quick text message or video chat;
• Doctors may use the same virtual connection tools to offer continuing support and education about illness management to chronically unwell patients. For instance, a primary care physician’s office may connect diabetic patients with nutritionists and other internal resources via video chats while also sending links to informative articles or videos, improving doctor-patient email communication;
• Long-term practice models that extend the time between virtual visits can be promoted so that many problems with the doctor-patient relationship are addressed. Ample time should be provided for virtual consultations so that there is enough time for interviews with patients, shared decision-making, and patient-physician contact.

5 Tips for Efficient Patient Communication in Healthcare

How is it best to communicate with patients? Here are five of the most important tips to help you improve communication with patients and build better relationships with them.

Be patient 

Your patients might not always understand what you’re trying to say, or they might need more time to process things. People who seek your assistance will likely not have any medical background, and it might be harder for them to follow what you’re saying and grasp everything quickly. Don’t rush; let your patients take time and ask questions. It’s okay if they need you to repeat something; you should not make them feel ashamed or stupid just because they are not knowledgeable about the same topic.

Motivate patients to ask questions 

Communication with patients is most effective when you encourage them to ask questions whenever something is misunderstood. Often, people are too scared of judgment or anger when asking their doctors about anything. However, there is no shaming in asking a medical professional to explain something or repeat what they have already said.

Tell the truth 

Any patient-doctor relationship should be built on trust, and it doesn’t matter if you see them for the first and last time or if you will have to contact each other daily. Be transparent about risks, possibilities, and challenges, and don’t make any processes, especially those that are hard to keep.

Make decisions together with your patients  

Communicating with patients involves trust and respect. Every medical expert should be respectful of patients’ preferences and needs and ensure that they take part in their treatment. Instead of choosing what might be best for them, give them a range of options. Let your patients choose what they feel is right.

Avoid using medical jargon  

To make patients’ communication most effective, avoid using words that are usually known only to medical professionals and other experts in the healthcare industry. Patients are likely to not understand you, especially under all the stress and worries. Use simple language to explain difficult things whenever possible.

Communication Skills Between Doctor and Patient

The STUDER Group has developed the AIDET communication tool outlining the main principles of patient-clinician conversation and patient satisfaction. It facilitates patient-clinician wires and has been applied in various therapeutic contexts.

Here we gather the main rules and patient communication skills:

Acknowledge:

• Make eye contact with patients, smile, and say hi.
• Make them feel valued.

Introduce:

• Give your name and position in the doctor-patient introduction.
• Describe your plan of action and how you will contribute to the process.
• Pay attention to the patient’s comments.

Duration:

• Estimate the duration of the procedure and any potential waiting periods. Inform the patient if the schedule changes.

Explain:

• Discuss what you intend to accomplish for or with the patient. Find out if the patient has any questions or concerns.

Thank You:  

• Thank the patients for their participation and cooperation.

TOP 5 is another method that emphasizes clinician-patient interaction.

The Clinical Excellence Commission adopted a plan that the Central Coast Local Health District had created in collaboration with caregivers at a few hospitals across NSW.

In this method, clinical personnel interacts with caregivers formally. The goal is to learn and write down up to five significant non-clinical management techniques and ideas for individualized care.

• talk to the caregiver;
• obtain knowledge and information;
• personalize the medication plan;
• provide non-clinical management techniques and advice for individualized care developed by clinical personnel and caregivers.

So, What Are the Benefits of Professional Physician-Patient Relations?

Establishing rapport, exchanging information, and including patients in decision-making are some objectives of medical discussion. Strong wires make it possible for health care professionals to precisely identify patients’ requirements and expectations. Patients, who feel that their doctor communicates well, report being more satisfied with their medical care and inclined to take advice and follow a recommended course of the health plan.

In the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons Vice Presidential Address, Terry Canale said,

“The patient will never care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Medical professionals must recall this while dealing with patients. Understanding your patient’s emotional complexity is an incredible place to start if you want a fruitful conversation. Effective doctor-patient contact can offer encouragement, support, reassurance, and incentives to adhere to a recommended course of medication. These components are in danger if this relationship fails.

If, as a pharma company or medical institute, you want to communicate clearly to fellow healthcare professionals and general people, then Viseven can help you provide top-quality content.

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While healthcare aims to increase patient outcomes, Pharma is looking forward to means beyond randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to assess and promote the value they produce.

Pharma real-world evidence (RWE) has been in practice for decades; nevertheless, advances in digital technologies and analytics offer a new way to apply it. It gives us insight into how patient characteristics and behavior affect outcomes. Thereby, it helps to predict the course progress of the disease, a patient’s response to therapies, or the risk of adverse events. Also, it makes R&D (Research and Development) investments more efficient and accelerates time-to-market.

If any company deploys advanced pharma RWE analytics, success will rely on the proper framework and capabilities chosen. So, further below, we will disclose more info on the nature of real-world evidence in the pharmaceutical landscape.

What Is Real-World Evidence in Pharma?

To understand medical RWE (real-world evidence) and its role in healthcare, we should first understand RWD (real-world data).

Pharma real-world data is any data gathered in routine care delivery taking its place contrary to the data collected from traditional clinical trials where the system controls variability; therefore, it does not represent real-world care and outcomes. There are many different types and real-world data sources, such as

• clinical data from electronic health records (EHRs) and case report forms (eCRFs);
• patient-generated data from the patient-reported outcome (PRO) surveys;
• cost and utilization data from claims and public datasets provide information regarding healthcare services utilization, population coverage, and prescribing patterns;
• public health data from various government data sources.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) characterizes RWE as “the clinical evidence regarding the usage and potential benefits or risks of a medical product derived from real-world data analysis.”

What Is the Difference Between Real-World Data and Real-World Evidence?

Real-world data presents value only when it’s converted into other formats. RWD is raw data that demonstrates the individuals’ experiences and characteristics, while real-world evidence can already be used for decision-making and other processes since it comes directly from RWD analysis. In essence, real-world evidence is created based on real-world data, which is why both often come together, instead of each being used separately.

Why Do We Need RWE in Pharma?

There’s a gap between research (what we learn) and everyday clinical practice (what we do) in healthcare, and it creates dissimilarity between what is anticipated to come and what we really get.

What happens is worth our concern. What has happened before, during, and after clinical treatments, interventions, and HCP live visits is the reality we stay in to drive measurable enhancements in healthcare.

RWE is meant to eliminate those gaps and keep us from going astray. It shows actual data on what happens when physicians treat several patients that do not appear in the homogeneous patient groups in traditional clinical trials. RWE in healthcare provides information on how therapies and treatments will fare in real-life settings, enabling doctors to anticipate the outcomes of new medications and various approaches. In contrast to clinical trials, which are frequently confined to specific criteria, real-world evidence encompasses aspects that might have gone unnoticed or been discovered too late.

That is why RWE has many uses and advantages across healthcare ecosystems.

Why Is Real-World Evidence Important?

It helps to comprehend how a new treatment innovation will behave in the real world rather than within classic randomized trials alone. While RCTs remain the general rule in approving new medical therapies, they often do not show the full picture. Standard RCTs cover a small segment of patients and test treatments in a controlled environment. Moreover, they are costly and time-consuming.

Using real-world evidence, we can improve our understanding of what works for different types of patients in a broader context. It allows researchers to study the safety and effectiveness of drug treatments and other interventions and consider other factors and variables. In addition, RWE generation is more cost-effective and can be more intelligent than standard randomized clinical trials.

Healthcare RWE can provide insight into how treatments work in specific patient subsets that may not have been encountered in RCTs. For instance, with RWE, researchers can study how therapy innovations work for patients with comorbidities, certain age groups, or certain socio-demographic groups. Real-world evidence can also provide what happens to the patient throughout life when isolated data from the randomized clinical trial period cannot be found.

Use of Real-World Evidence in Pharmaceutical Companies

Pharmaceutical companies have been using real data for decades to make informed decisions, respond to external stakeholders’ requests, and improve their drugs’ market position. Recently, growing acceptance from regulators, demand from payers and physicians, and greater familiarity with digital and analytics have enabled some companies to reap much broader benefits from real-world evidence.

Big Pharma Has Already Benefited From It

Examples include Pfizer’s use of electronic medical record (EMR) data to obtain approval to treat male breast cancer and AstraZeneca’s use of real-world data to demonstrate the effectiveness of its diabetes treatment against competitors.

 Is Real-World Evidence a Growing Challenge for Pharma?

No matter how obvious it may sound, RWE is used across the entire healthcare system. From the physician’s office that logs the data to the register, life science researchers who operate with it throughout their studies to health plans, regulators, payers, and policy creators. So, it has a vast impact on the whole spectrum.

• Life Science Research

As traditional randomized clinical trials give out isolated data that does not deal with real-world life, science specialists and biopharmaceutical companies are significant stakeholders of RWE. It complements RCTs by providing additional insights into daily medication use in clinical care, considering the safety and efficacy of innovative therapies.

• Policy Makers and Regulators

The subject allows for monitoring aftermath safety and adverse events; therefore, it provides support regulatory decision-making. Operating with real-world evidence essentially affects the base for medication approvals and drug development acceleration.

• Health Plans and Payers

Safety monitoring, utilization management, and cost/value analysis are elements that health plans and payers derive from RWE affecting studies that inform pharmacy and therapeutic (P&T) committee decisions. Anyway, RCTs will stay necessary for payer decision-making; nevertheless, they begin to often appeal to RWE for better validation because they need to comprehend how the use of medicines impacts value-based care outcomes.

Additionally, they use RWE to assess pharmaceuticals and other therapies’ cost-effectiveness.

• Physicians and Healthcare Providers

Applying RWE to clinicians is more indirect than for other healthcare stakeholders. First, healthcare providers can use the clinical guidelines developed by RWE. Insights from real-world evidence can help care teams understand the disease and help inform treatment decisions. So they enable physicians to create more targeted and appropriate treatment plans for their patients.

RWE is only as good as the RWD used to create it. Physicians and other healthcare providers are vital to the data collection process. During an appointment with a patient, physicians typically use electronic health record (EHR) systems to enter structured clinical data such as diagnoses, scheduled laboratory tests with results, and prescribed medications. In addition, providers submit applications to payers who offer another source of RWD. This data can then be de-identified and used to obtain RWE.

Life Sciences Real-World Evidence and Viseven

Viseven helps organizations gain real insight into the world from the point of care throughout the patient journey. Our innovative solutions enable our customers to find timely, actionable real-world data to improve patient care and outcomes and can help you demonstrate how your products can benefit patient health.

You can contact us anytime if you require any assistance by filling contact form below.

The drug industry is highly regulated, and its products and offerings have far-reaching impacts on the public’s health and well-being. From the ideation stage to the marketing of the drugs, the pharma market employs medical experts, researchers, and thought leaders. These professionals are known as key opinion leaders (KOLs) in the pharma industry. 

Key opinion leaders play a critical role in the life sciences industry – pharmaceutical companies often engage them during clinical trials and drug commercialization. However, given the current regulatory approval challenges, many pharma companies seek to collaborate with KOLs medical throughout the entire drug development cycle. The role of KOL in pharma is pivotal as they provide invaluable insights that help manufacturers navigate the regulatory landscape and bring credibility during the marketing phase. 

Who are Key Opinion Leaders in Pharma?

Key opinion leaders in pharma provide valuable feedback about new medicines. They are experienced physicians who help shape how a new medication is marketed and its features. They have become invaluable in the drug industry. 

Many healthcare professionals opt to become a key opinion leader (KOL) because it allows them to share and increase their knowledge about the latest innovations, better treat their patients, widen their professional circle, and receive handsome compensation. 

KOLs can be a valuable source of knowledge for patients and ensure that patients receive the best treatment possible.  

Potential and Expertise

KOLs have the potential to reach peers and patients from all over the world. This global perspective helps create other KOL engagement and management activities. Working with KOLs allows you to create referral networks and connect new patients, regardless of location or affiliation. 

A KOL’s expertise can help in making a successful clinical treatment. In some cases, a KOL may be the one who coordinates the clinical trials and keeps everything organized, especially when there are multiple study sites involved. Having such a physician on board can help ensure that the process of clinical trial runs smoothly and successfully. 

The Role of KOLs in the Pharma Market

Key opinion leader is regarded as the mastermind in the pharma industry. They’ve put in the time and research to be recognized by their peers as experts in their field. As a result, they have gained a reputation as a thought leader within their specific niche. Their expert opinions and actions can significantly affect the adoption of a new product/brand or the ability to influence consumer purchasing decisions. 

Key opinion leaders in healthcare are sort of like the avengers of the clinical research world. They can fill many different roles, and their skill sets are highly sought after by those in the know. A key opinion leader can be critically important in helping to educate physicians about a new drug. They can provide information about the working of drugs, which patient demographics can benefit the most, and what treatment regimens are most effective. KOLs can also offer their unique insights as early adopters of new therapies, which can help to identify and create brand acceptance in healthcare. 

Additionally, pharma brands strive to engage with KOLs with extensive expertise in their target therapeutic areas to assist them in participant recruitment for clinical trials and data analysis. These leaders help to identify the unmet needs of both physicians and patients, allowing companies to produce more effective drugs with less side effects. Besides, KOLs have influence over the medical community and therefore can help companies boost their marketing efforts.  

How to Identify KOLs in Pharma?

Correctly evaluating a KOL’s influence and expertise is crucial to developing successful pharma initiatives that engage them. You could use key factors to gauge a KOL’s strength and involvement, including the breadth and depth of their participation, brand adoption, and behaviors. 

• Area of expertise

Before engaging with KOLs, it is imperative to learn about their area of expertise. Do they participate in panel discussions? Have they ever worked in hospices or emergency care? Do they have hands-on experience working with older adults? What kind of academic achievements are they known for? The first thing to do on your list should be to understand their clinical and research interests and contributions

• Knowledge about critical medicine

A KOL in healthcare can be experts in complex conditions associated with increased chances of relapses. For instance, diagnosing and treating such chronic conditions as endometriosis is a time-consuming journey for patients, often involving surgery. However, thought leaders can offer valuable insights, aiding gynecologists in understanding innovative treatments and expediting the recovery process. 

• Influence over the local and global medical community

Some KOLs might offer treatment themselves or receive patient referrals from all over the world. Collaborating with these experts can be incredibly advantageous, extending the reach and impact of marketing campaigns. 

• Openness to adopting new innovations and practices

If you need to improve your drug development or clinical trial process, you might want to connect with KOLs that are early adopters of innovative approaches and treatments. This type of KOLs usually do not shy away from participating in clinical studies and are eager to get involved in early drug assessments. This way, they have a critical role in getting first approvals of medicines and expediting time-to-market.

• Expertise in conducting clinical trials

Pharma companies may also seek KOLs that could refer patients to participate in clinical trials. Their role cannot be underestimated when there are multiple study sites in the trial process. Moreover, they can implement investigator-initiated trials to test alternative approaches to using certain medicines. 

KOL Identification and Mapping 

Before a company can start working with leadership, they must identify which experts have a sphere of influence within their area of interest. To do this, organizations track healthcare professionals who regularly speak at scientific meetings and medical congresses. 

They also monitor medical practitioners whose work is published in respected journals and who are frequently cited by media outlets as clinical experts.

KOL identification and mapping are like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s a quantitative way to locate physician leaders who influence the medical community. It’s about finding HCP leaders with the most influence within the pharmaceutical industry.

KOL mapping is vital for pharmaceutical companies because it allows them to weed out physicians who don’t meet their requirements. This categorization process is done based on factors like location, specialty domain, and influence that help these manufacturers collaborate with the most influential person in that vertical.

Why are Key Opinion Leaders Important to Pharma Companies?

Key opinion leaders in healthcare have a lot of experience, making them influential in their community. That means that KOLs could help create awareness for a new drug and can also be beneficial for pharmaceutical companies to generate turnover and increase sales.  

KOLs help organizations to make precise decisions while purchasing new medicines – like how a rock star’s opinion makes their fans buy more merch from a band they love. 

A KOL in the pharma industry plays an integral strategic role as they help manufacturers to have the desired impact with their target audience since they help bring credibility. They can also help companies by providing buy-in at a hospital or health network. 

KOL Engagement in Pharma

Thought leaders engagement in pharma is beneficial for companies because it allows them to generate data, refine strategy and create persuasive medical and promotional content with the help of an expert. KOL relationships are built on trust and a mutual need for long-term cooperation. 

From this perspective, if a company does not take the time to ask questions internally about what an individual KOL needs, it will not have anyone to speak up for the company’s interests in the relationship.

Build Trusted Relationships With Thought Leadership in Healthcare

Product managers are under a lot of pressure to make decisions quickly. However, by forming relationships with respected experts in various medical divisions, they can gain invaluable ideas that will help them make better decisions and shape their businesses more effectively. 

Thus, KOLs offer their expertise throughout the product life cycles and development, among other things. They can share it via various communication channels like live conferences or social media. In other words, using KOL in pharma marketing can be a powerful tool to popularize their product.

If you’re in the health science and medical market, you know that effective KOL management is important to your success and business. After all, engaging the right healthcare thought leaders can make or break your drug development efforts.

KOL management is constantly evolving, so companies must look for new and better ways to interact with key opinion leaders. But if you can stay ahead of the curve, you’ll be in an excellent position to succeed and increase sales.

Effectiveness of KOL Management

When KOLs are managed well, they can hugely impact a drug product’s success – from the early stages of discovery and research to when it hits the market. You can see the benefits in more persuasive medical and marketing materials, quicker patient recruitment for trials, more vital consumer awareness, and even influencing prescribing behaviors. In other words, managed KOLs can be a real game-changer.

When a pharmaceutical company and a Key Opinion Leader work together successfully, it’s a win-win situation. The company gets valuable insights from an expert, and the Key Opinion Leader gets opportunities for networking and professional development, not to mention the chance to share ideas and learn from others. Go ahead and gather conferences, webinars or create a blog article for social media to combine your brand message with thought leaders influence.

Conclusion

The meaning of KOL in pharma is like the megaphone of the clinical trial world. They help get the word out about trial results and outcomes, which are essential for successful market access and eventual drug product adoption. Consequently, they know the best language to communicate trial outcomes and the most effective platforms to disseminate information to healthcare professionals and patient communities. 

Moreover, when they serve as principals or even sub-investigators in clinical trials, they naturally boost the visibility of the trials to their peers and other decision-makers in the healthcare sector. It helps both boosting high-quality pharma brands and involve more experts to the hottest topics.

Learn how to engage Key Opinion Leaders in your brand strategy and build effective communication — fill out the form below so our experts can reach out to you.