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Gamification in Pharma: Creates Engaging Patient Experience For Better Results

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On January 03, 2019, media reports flashed – “A video game-based ‘digital medicine’ tool can help reduce symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention/deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” This study was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, confirming the feasibility and safety of the tool called Project: EVO, which delivers sensory and motor stimuli through an action video game experience.

This initiative reconfirms that technology is becoming a great enabler to provide integrated, comprehensive and cost effective approach in treating many diseases, particularly with ‘Digital Medicine.’ The above report on ‘Project EVO’ is an example of application of the concept of ‘gamification’ in digital medicine. Many consider ‘gamification’ as a game changer to create an engaging patient experience with added value. It makes patients getting involved in the disease-treatment process, especially for effective self-management of chronic disorders.

I shall focus on this area in today’s article, giving examples wherever available. However, let me start by recapitulating what is ‘gamification’ in the pharma industry.

Gamification: 

The Oxford dictionary defines ‘gamification’ as: ‘The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.’ It further adds, ‘gamification is exciting because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun.’

‘Gamification’ is assuming increasing importance, with disruptive digital innovations gradually becoming game changers in the pharma business. This is mainly because, it can deliver to a specific group of patients, doctors or other stakeholders exactly what they look for – with precision.

I suggested in my article, published in this blog on January 07, 2019 that pharma companies should facilitate self-management of chronicailments,not just for better outcomes, but also for improving the quality of patient engagement. To achieve this objective,‘gamification’ could play a remarkable role-such as disease awareness and prevention and when afflicted its desirable self-management. This has the potential to create a win-win situation between patients and a drug company.

This is so important, as ‘the old paradigm of the paternalistic model of medicine is now transforming into an equal level partnership between patients and professionals, aided and augmented by disruptive technologies. This comment was made in a study titled, ‘Digital health is a cultural transformation of traditional health care,’ published in mHealth on September 14, 2017.

‘Patient-doctor partnership is critical in the new paradigm:

One of the major ways to develop a partnership between the treating doctors along with the product/service providing pharma companies and patients is through mutually beneficial ‘patient engagement’ programs with added value.

That such programs can create a unique patient experience of better outcomes at a lesser cost, has already been established by a number of credible research studies. Taking a cue from quantum benefits that this initiative provides, many pharma companies are now making ‘patient engagement’ strategy as an integral part of their overall market access program, including the process of branding.

What does an effective patient engagement strategy involve?

An article titled, ‘Patient Engagement: A Key Element in Pharmaceutical Marketing Strategy,’ published in the IgeaHub on May 29, 2016 defines ‘patient engagement’ as a concept that combines a patient’s knowledge, skills, ability and willingness to manage his own health and care with interventions designed to increase activation and promote positive patient behaviors. This measure also involves offering relevant services to patients.

To assess the opportunity of patient services in the pharma industry, Accenture conducted a survey titled, ‘Pharma’s Growing Opportunity in Patient Services’, on 200+ pharma patient services executives, covering seven therapeutic areas – heart, lungs, brain, immune systems, bones, hormone/metabolism, and cancer. The study concluded,the future of patient services that requires patient engagement, is bright. It elaborated by saying, this approach offers pharmaceutical companies a tremendous opportunity – for those willing to invest in the right places and let patients know about them in the right way.

To move in this direction, ‘gamification’ is an efficient way for the pharma companies to follow. Let us see below how does ‘gamification’ work on the ground.

How does ‘gamification’ work?

According to the findings of Innovatemedtec, ‘gamification’ with health apps typically works in the following three ways:

  • Allowing users to share progress and results with their friends or other users of the service, creating a competitive spirit to elicit more or better use of the specific health app service.
  • Giving virtual gifts, such as badges, medals, stars during each stage of progress, generating a sense of achievement for greater patient motivation levels in disease monitoring and management.
  • Advanced medical health applications can provide real-time biofeedback with built-in sensors. Or using a storytelling approach and explaining health literature related to diagnoses, medical procedures and patient behavior.

Thus, the primary reasons for introducing ‘gamification’ in the pharma industry would be to improve the disease awareness and increasing patients’ motivation for self-management for mutual benefits.

Improves disease awareness and motivation for self-management:

The precise rationale for ‘gamification’ in the pharma industry was nicely articulated in the ‘M.Sc. Thesis titled, ‘Gamification in the Pharmaceutical Industry – Exploring how European Pharmaceutical Organizations can build and use Gamified Mobile Applications to Improve Relations with Patients.’ This was written by Nanna Birkedal and jointly delivered by the University of Stirling and Lund University.

It highlighted: “Patients and industry experts both argue that awareness is important; constant reminders about healthy habits are pivotal for an improved lifestyle. Patients furthermore need to be motivated to act upon this and actively implement the required lifestyle changes. If pharmaceutical organizations succeed in helping the patients with overcoming challenges related to their illness by motivating them to enact the needed lifestyle changes, it will increase the perceived trust towards their brand and thereby strengthen their relationship with the patients. This research argues that digital gamification is suited for this purpose, hence why it may be advantageous for organizations to incorporate digital gamification …”

Why and how to motivate patients for self-management of chronic disease?

As I said before, after proper diagnosis of a chronic ailment and charting out a medical treatment pathway, self-management of the disease by patients plays a critical role. Thus, the question arises, how to motivate patients and more importantly, keep patients motivated for engaging in self-management of such nature.

There is also a need for continuous improvement of the ‘gamification’ process for a long-term engagement of patients, leading to progressively better outcomes. Many examples of success with ‘gamification’ are available for chronic diseases, such as diabetes.

One of the metrics used in ‘gamification’ to help diabetic patients stick with a digital health platform, making it a higher priority in their daily lives, is to provide useful timely information on their disease condition. This metric may include informing the user about some tangible changes in their health risks due to the disease. For example: “Over the last month your effective glucose has reduced the risk of losing your eyesight by 10 percent.” Accordingly, the patients may earn points or badges for using the app and accomplishing certain important tasks.

In this way, gamification can immensely help self-management through behavioral changes, improving disease outcomes. As Healthcare in America also reiterates: ‘There is nothing more motivating than knowing your health is improving in real time.’

Another study, and two examples of ‘gamification’ in pharma:

Another study titled, ‘Gamification: Applications for Health Promotion And Health Information Technology Engagement’, published by ResearchGate arrived at an interesting conclusion. It reiterated: ‘Game-based approaches (gamification) can provide ideal strategies for health promotion, prevention, and self-management of chronic conditions. However, there is a need to clearly define components and uses of gamification in healthcare for increased patient engagement in health information technology.’

Elaborating the point further, the authors emphasized that many health/physical activity apps provide feedback in a clear and concise manner and in a variety of formats (e.g., graphs, text or icons). The available option to share the feedbacks on social networking sites allows for further engagement by individuals and adds additional motivation and encouragement in attaining users’ goals. However, it recommends more studies to explore and identify the suitability of ‘gamification’ for health in clinical settings.

There have been several instances of gamification efforts health care with powerful effects. Let me cite just two interesting illustrations from mobihealthnews, as follows:

Conclusion:

As available from various literature, such as Healthcare in America, there are enough well-verified testimony, indicating that patients are motivated by gamified elements.

Consequently, some major global pharmaceutical companies have started testing the water. For example, the Media Release of Roche dated June 30, 2017 announces, the company has acquired mySugr - an Austrian startup that offers gamified solutions for diabetes management in a fun way, both for children and adults. It, reportedly, has more than a million registered users in 52 countries and is available in 13 different languages. Post-acquisition, it will be an integral part of Roche’s new patient-centered digital health services in diabetes care.

Hence, ‘gamification’ in pharma carries potential to be a win-win strategy in creating engaging, motivating and a unique patient experience in self-management of chronic diseases, for better outcomes.

By: Tapan J. Ray    

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Rewriting Pharma Strategy For ‘Doctor Google’ Era

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In search of more and more information on an ailment, a large number of Internet savvy individuals now feel comfortable to consult ‘Doctor Google’ – much before approaching a qualified medical professional for the same. If and when they visit one, many would possibly have arrived at a ‘symptoms-diagnosis correlation’ – based on their own interpretations of the sessions with ‘Doctor Google’– right or wrong.

‘Doctor Google’ – a ‘weird’ terminology, was virtually unheard of, until recently. This name owes its origin to universally popular ‘Google Search Engine.’ The number of frequent ‘consultations’ with ‘Doctor Google’ is breaking new records almost every day – primarily driven by deep penetration of smartphones – a versatile device that helps to charting unhindered, anywhere in the cyberspace.

In this article, I shall not go into whether this trend is good or bad. Nonetheless, the hard fact is, in the modern digital age, this trend is fast gaining popularity, across the world, including India. I shall discuss below, why and how the impact of ‘Doctor Google’ syndrome sends a strong signal to pharma companies to rewrite their business strategies for sustainable future growth.

‘Doctor Google’ syndrome:

To be on the same page with all my readers, ‘Doctor Google’ terminology is used for the process of getting various disease, treatment or medicine related information from cyberspace and especially through Google Search.This practice is currently being followed by many individuals who arenot qualified medical professionals, but through ‘Google Search’ often try to self-diagnose a disease or medical condition, or other health related issues. Some may even cross verify a professional doctor’s advice with ‘Doctor Google’.

Today, it is not uncommon to visit ‘Doctor Google’ first, instead of immediately visiting a General Practitioner (GP) for seeking professional advice. The areas of such search may range from trivial to even serious health conditions. The bottom-line therefore is, prompt ‘information seeking’ of all kinds, including health, and forming an opinion based on available information, is fast becoming a behavioral pattern within Internet canny and smartphone equipped population, across the world.

Medical Journals also reported this trend:

This trend has been captured in medical journals, as well. For example, a paper on Dr. Google in the Emergency Department (ED), published by the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on August 20, 2018 concluded as follows:

“Online health care information was frequently sought before presenting to an ED, especially by younger or e-health literate patients. Searching had a positive impact on the doctor-patient interaction and was unlikely to reduce adherence to treatment.”

Yet another study titled, ‘What Did You Google? Describing Online Health Information Search Patterns of ED patients and Their Relationship with Final Diagnoses’, published onJuly 14, 2017 in the ‘Western Journal of Emergency Medicine’, came with a thought-provoking conclusion. Reiterating that Internet has become an important source of health information for patients, this study observed, many of these online health searches may be more general or related to an already-diagnosed condition or planned treatment, as follows:

  • 35 percent of Americans reported looking online, specifically to determine what medical condition they may have;
  • 46 percent of those reported that the information they found online led them to think they needed medical attention;
  • The majority of patients used symptoms as the basis of their pre-ED presentation Internet search. When patients did search for specific diagnoses, only a minority searched for the diagnosis they eventually received.

Availability of credible online ‘symptom-checkers’:

To help patients getting credible information on many symptoms, there are several highly regarded online sources for the same, such as, a Symptom Checker provided by the Mayo Clinic of global repute.

The purpose of this tool is to help narrow search along a person’s information journey. This is not purported to be a self-diagnostic tool. A ‘symptom-checker’allows searchers to choose a variety of factors related to symptoms, helping to limit the potential medical conditions accordingly. This tool does not incorporate all personal, health and demographic factors related to the concerned person, which could allow a definitive cause or causes to be pinpointed. It also flags, the most reliable way to determine the cause of any symptom, and what to do, is to visit a competent health care provider.

Further, the research letter titled, ‘Comparison of Physician and Computer Diagnostic Accuracy’, published in the December 2016 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, records additional important findings, as follows:

  • Physician diagnostic error is common and information technology may be part of the solution.
  • Given advancements in computer science, computers may be able to independently make accurate clinical diagnoses.
  • Researchers compared the diagnostic accuracy of physicians with computer algorithms called symptom-checkers and evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of 23 symptom-checkers using 45 clinical vignettes. These included the patient’s medical history and had no physical examination or test findings.
  • Across physicians, they were more likely to list the correct diagnosis first for high-acuity vignettes and for uncommon vignettes. In contrast, symptom checkers were more likely to list the correct diagnosis first for low-acuity vignettes and common vignettes.

Nonetheless, the above examples further reinforce the fact that patients now have access to robust online health-related data, on various aspects of a disease treatment process.

Technology is rapidly transforming healthcare:

That technology is rapidly transforming healthcare is vindicated by the estimate that the global market for digital health is expected to reach £43 billion by the end of 2018. This was noted in an article, titled ‘3 ways the healthcare industry is looking more like Google, Apple and Amazon’, published in Pharma IQ on November 16, 2018.

Pharma companies are realizing that an increasing number of patients now have better access to online information regarding their overall health and medical conditions, including various prevention and treatment options with costs for each. As people take a more active role in managing their health, pharma players, especially in their engagement with patients, require moving from mostly passive to active communication platforms. Consequently, personalizing health care products and services is expected to become the new norm, making the traditional pharma business models virtually redundant, the article highlights.

While going through this metamorphosis, pharma sector would willy-nilly emerge as an integrated technology-based industry. More tech-based changes will call for in various critical interfaces related to an organization’s ‘patient-orientation’, which is today more a lip-service than the ground reality. Entry of pure tech-based companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple into the healthcare space would hasten this process.Although such changes are taking place even in India, pharma companies in the country are yet to take it seriously.

Pioneering ‘omnichannel’ engagement is pivotal: 

Again, to be on the same page with all, the term Omnichannel in the pharma parlance may be used for a cross-channel content strategy for improving patient engagement and overall patient-experience. This should include all touchpoints in the diagnosis and treatment process of a disease. It is believed, the ‘companies that use ‘omnichannel’, contend that a customer values the ability to engage with a company through multiple avenues at the same time.’ Thus, pioneering ‘omnichannel’ engagement is critical for a pharma player in today’s scenario.

A valid question may come up – is ‘Omnichannel (all-channel)’ patient engagement is just another name of ‘Multichannel (many-channel)’ engagement? No – not really. Interestingly, both will be able to deliver targeted contents to patients through a number of interactive digital platforms, namely smartphone-based Apps, specially formatted websites, social media community and the likes. But the difference is, as a related paper lucidly puts it - ‘Omnichannel approach connects these channels, bridging technology-communication gaps that may exist in multichannel solutions.’

That said, just as the above-mentioned pure technology companies, pharma players also need to learn the art of gathering a large volume of credible data, analyze those through modern data analytics for taking strategic decisions. This is emerging as an essential success requirement, even in the health care arena.

Precise data-based answers to strategic questions, as planned, are to be used effectively for omnichannel personalized patient engagement. This is fundamental to offer a delightful personal experience to patients, encompassing diagnosis, treatment, recovery, including follow-up stages of an ailment, especially involving the chronic ones. Only well-qualified and adequately trained professionals with in-depth pharma domain knowledge can make it happen – consistently, across multiple channels, such as social media, Apps and devices – seamlessly.

Real time customer data management is critical:

Virtually real time customer data management of huge volume that aims to provide ‘Unique Patient Experience (UPQ)’,is the lifeblood of success in any ‘omnichannel’ engagement. This is criticalnot just for right content strategy formulation, but also to ensure effective interaction and utilization between all channels, as intended, besides assessing the quality of UPQ. Once the process is in place, the marketers get to know promptly and on an ongoing basis, about the quality patient experience – as they travel through various touchpoints, to intervene promptly whenever it calls for. I explained this point in my article titled ‘Holistic Disease Treatment Solution: Critical for Pharma Success’, featured in this blog on October 29, 2018.

Credible data are all important – not just any data:

Real time voluminous data generation, coupled with astute analysis and crafty usage   of the same, has immense potential to unlock doors of many opportunities. The effective leverage of which ensures excellence in business. But most important in this endeavor, it is of utmost importance to ensure that such data are of high quality – always. Similarly, use of any high-quality data, if not relevant to time, in any way or outdated, can be equally counterproductive.

An article titled, ‘Hitting Your Targets: A Check-up on Data’, published at PharmExec.com on August 02, 2018, aptly epitomizes it. It says, no matter what sophisticated technologies a life sciences organization uses, and how smart its sales and marketing strategy is, if there are flaws and gaps in foundational provider data, the company will end up with wasted resources and lost market share. Implementing ongoing data governance and stewardship programs will help improve efficiencies, allocate resources, and target customers with increased precision.

Conclusion:

Going back to where I started from, it’s a fact that many Internet-friendly people now visit ‘Doctor Google’, much before they visit a medical doctor. Most probably, they will also arrive at a list of possible diagnoses, according to their own assessment.

While going through this process, they acquire an experience, which may or may not be new or unique in nature – depending on various circumstances. But the key point is, such patients – the number of which is fast increasing, are no longer as naïve as before on information related to a host of ailments. Consequently, the ‘pharma-patient interaction’ that has traditionally been passive, and through the doctors, will require to be more active and even proactive. This has to happen covering all the touchpoints in an involved disease treatment process where pharma is directly or indirectly involved.

To be successful in this new paradigm, pharma companies need to ensure that such ‘active communication’ with patients is necessarily based on a large pool of constantly updated credible data, exchanged through ‘omnichannel’ interactive platforms. The key success factor that will matter most is providing ‘unique patient experience’ through this process and its high quality. From this perspective, I reckon, rewriting pharma business strategy is of prime importance in the fast unfolding ‘Doctor Google’ era.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Organic and Inorganic Growth Strategy For Sustainable Business Excellence

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For an enthusiast, witnessing any organization growing consistently, is indeed exhilarating. This becomes even more interesting at a time when challenges and frequent surprises in the business environment become a new normal. A robust short, medium and long growth strategy turns out to be a necessity for sustaining the business excellence over a long period of time. This is applicable even to the pharma players in India.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an organization usually assumes the role of chief architect of this strategy, which needs to be subsequently approved by the Board of Directors of the company concerned, collectively. The Board holds the CEO, who ultimately carries the can, accountable to deliver the deliverables in creating the desired shareholder value.

Two basic types of growth strategies:

Based on the CEO’s own experience, and also considering the expectations of the Board of Directors, together with the investors, the CEO opts for either of these two following types of basic growth strategies, or a mix of these two in varying proportions:

  • Organic growth: Growing the business through company’s own pursued activities, or all growth strategies sans Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) or by any other means not external to the organization.
  • Inorganic growth: Growing the business through M&A or takeovers.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with either of these two types of basic growth strategies, or their mix in varying proportions. Nevertheless, it is generally believed that with the basic ‘Organic’ growth plan, the companies, or rather their CEOs have a greater degree of sustainable control in various critical areas. These often include, retaining senior management focus on the organizational core strength for sustainable excellence, or even maintaining the organizational culture and people management style, without any possible conflict in these areas.

In this article, I shall explore different aspects of these two basic growth strategies for sustainable business excellence. To illustrate the point better, I shall draw upon examples from two large but contrasting pharma companies. Let me begin this discussion with the following question:

When does a company choose predominantly inorganic growth path?

Its answer has been well articulated in an article of the Harvard Business Review (HBR). It says: “High-growth companies become low growth all the time. Many CEOs accept that as an inevitable sign that their businesses have matured, and so they stop looking internally for big growth. Instead, they become serial acquirers of smaller companies or seek a transformative acquisition of another large business, preferably a high-growth one.”

That said, none can deny that the short to medium term growth of a company following M&A is much faster and its market share and size become much larger than any comparable organizations pursuing the ‘Organic Growth’ path. Thus, more often than not, such initiatives create a ‘domino effect’, especially in the pharma industry, across the world.

Inorganic growth and key management challenges:

The short and medium-term boost in organizational performance post M&A, comes with its complexities in meeting similar expectations of the Company Board, shareholders and the investors, over a long period of time. This is besides all other accompanying issues, such as people related and more importantly in setting the future direction of the company. The cumulative impact of all this, propels the CEO to go all out for a similar buying spree. When it doesn’t materialize, as was expected, both the Board and the CEO are caught in a catch 22 situation. As mentioned earlier, I shall illustrate this point, with the following recent example covering some important areas.

The examples:

“Please don’t go, Ian Read. That’s the message Pfizer’s board of directors has made loud and clear to the almost-65-year-old CEO, who could very well retire with a $15.7 million pension package.” This is what appeared in an international media report on March 16, 2018.

Analyzing the current challenges faced by the company, the media report interpreted the indispensability of Ian Read in an interesting way. It reported: “The pharma giant considers Read the most qualified person to steer the company through a host of challenges, from oncology trial disappointments to investor pressure to make a big acquisition.” Investors are also, reportedly, sending clear signals to the CEO about the tough road ahead.

Thus, Ian Read “who turns 65 in May, also must remain CEO through at least next March and not work for a competitor for a minimum of two years after that to be eligible,” reported Bloomberg on March 16, 2018. It is interesting to note at this point that Mr. Read has been the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pfizer – the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, since 2010.

A different CEO rated as ‘Top Performing’ pharma leader:

Pfizer CEO’s ‘exemplary leadership and vision’, has been captured in the Proxy Statement by the Independent Directors on the Board of the Company. However, Harvard Business Review (HBR) in its 2016 pan-industry ranking of the “best-performing” CEOs in the world, featured Lars Rebien Sorensen – the then outgoing CEO of Novo Nordisk. He topped the list for the second successive year. Sorensen achieved this distinction ‘Mostly, for his role overseeing astonishing returns for shareholders and market capitalization growth.’ All the CEOs were, reportedly, evaluated by HBR on a variety of financial, environmental, social, and governance metrics.

Interestingly, in the 2017 HBR list for the same, when the Novo Nordisk CEO was out of the race, no pharma CEO could achieve this distinction or even a place in the top 10. Pablo Isla of Inditex (Spanish clothing retailer), Martin Sorrell of WPP (PR major in the UK) and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA (American technology company occupied the number 1, 2 and 3 spots, respectively.

Two interesting leadership examples:

I shall not delve into any judgmental interpretations on any aspect of leadership by comparing the Pfizer CEO with his counterpart in Novo Nordisk. Nevertheless, one hard fact cannot be ignored. The accomplishments of Pfizer CEO were evaluated by its own Board and were rated outstanding. Whereas, in case of Novo Nordisk CEO, besides the company’s own Board, his performance evaluation was done by the outside independent experts on the HBR panel.

Was there any difference in their growth strategy?

Possibly yes. There seems to be, at least, one a key difference in the ‘growth strategy’ of these two large pharma players.

  • Novo Nordisk is primarily driven by ‘Organic growth’ with a focused product portfolio on predominantly diabetes disease area, besides hemophilia, growth disorders and obesity. This has been well captured in the company’s statement on February 6, 2017 where it says: “Organic growth enables steady cash returns to shareholders via dividends and share repurchase programs” and is driven by its Insulin portfolio.
  • Whereas, Pfizer, though in earlier days followed an ‘organic’ growth path, subsequently changed to ‘Inorganic Growth’ route. Pfizer’s mega acquisitions, in its quest for faster growth to be the world’s largest pharma player, include Warner Lambert (2000), Pharmacia (2002) and Wyeth (2009). The key purpose of these acquisitions appears to expand into a diversified product portfolio of blockbuster drugs.

Pfizer did contemplate changing course:

In 2010, barely two weeks on the job of CEO, Pfizer Inc., Ian Read indicated breaking up the company into two core businesses. However, after six years of meticulous planning, on September 26, 2016, the company announced: “After an extensive evaluation, the company’s Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team have determined the company is best positioned to maximize future shareholder value creation in its current structure and will not pursue splitting Pfizer Innovative Health and Pfizer Essential Health into two, separate publicly traded companies at this time.”

Sustained value creation following the same path not easy:

After the decision to operate as one company and consolidate the business pursuing similar ‘Inorganic Growth’ strategy, Pfizer went ahead full throttle to acquire AstraZeneca for USD119 billion. But, on May 19, 2014, AstraZeneca Board rejected it. Again, on April 05, 2017, Reuters reported, “Pfizer Inc. agreed on Tuesday to terminate its $160 billion agreement to acquire Botox maker Allergan Plc, in a major victory to U.S. President Barack Obama’s drive to stop tax-dodging corporate mergers.”

Apparently, the current Pfizer CEO is now expected to finish his unfinished agenda, at least for the short to medium term, as the current blockbuster drugs continue losing the steam.

Conclusion:

It’s a common belief that slowing down of a company’s business performance is a compelling reason for its switch from the ‘Organic’ to ‘Inorganic’ growth strategy. The new CEO of Novo Nordisk – Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen also appears to subscribe to this view. While, reportedly, including negative growth at the low end in constant currencies in its guidance for 2017, Jorgensen apparently, confided that M&A will now be a part of the company’s growth search.

On facing a similar situation, the above HBR article suggested the CEOs to fight the short-term pressures of the business cycle of moving away from the ‘Organic’ growth path. This can be overcome by various means, as good ideas for organic growth can always attract required resources and support.

While choosing an appropriate basic growth strategy for the organization – ‘Organic’ or ‘Inorganic’, the CEO’s focus should be on what is best for sustainable and long-term business performance, without being trapped by the prevailing circumstances. Thus, addressing the internal causative factors, effectively, would likely to be a better idea in resolving the issue of a sustainable business performance. This is regardless of the underlying reasons, such as gradually drying up the new product pipeline while blockbuster drugs are going off patent, or due to several other different reasons.

Nevertheless, in the balance of probability, ‘Organic’ growth strategy appears to be less complex and is fraught with lower business risks and uncertainties. Consequently, it reflects a greater likelihood of sustainable achievements for the CEO, and in tandem, a long-term financial reward for the shareholders, investors, and finally the organization as a whole.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Pharma’s Late Realization

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Technology, by and large, is impacting almost every part of our life. Interestingly, some of these, like mobile phones and desktop computers, found their initial uses, mostly as trendy status symbols of relatively rich and high ranking corporate honchos, before getting merged as essential tools in our everyday life, as it were.

Today’s digital world empowers people to virtually doing anything – literally, such as getting an online education, communicating with people – both in audio and video format, getting any routine medical test or household work done, transferring money, making any bill or other payments, buying travel-theater-concert tickets, or ordering any item online from home or wherever one chooses to, besides umpteen number of other things. A large global population now spends more time on communication in the virtual world, than face to face communication with physical presence.

Similarly, application of technology, especially digital, has radically transformed for the better, the way several companies in many industries have rewritten their respective playbooks of critical business processes. It starts from the generation credible data of humongous volume, critical analysis of those before initiation of the planning process, spanning across the endpoint of making consumers pay for the products or services willingly, while achieving both financial and non-financial business goals. In tandem, available cutting edge digital technology is being leveraged by these companies for developing both new products and processes, including the rejuvenation of many stagnating businesses.

Whether the pharma industry, as well, has started leveraging digital technology optimally or not, was discussed in the A.T. Kearney Report – “New Medicine for a New World, Time for Pharma to Dive into Digital”. It aptly captured the overall situation in this area for pharma a few years ago, by saying: ‘Pharma’s customers increasingly live and interact in a digital world. The industry has been dipping a toe in the digital waters, but now it’s time to take the plunge.’

In today’s article, I shall discuss on the current-status in this area, as some respected pharma veterans, still nurturing ‘traditional thought pattern’, keep displaying skepticism in this area, though indirectly. Nevertheless, directly they seem to keep their feet in two boats, probably for obvious reasons.

A disruptive change that can’t be ignored:

It’s a reality that we now live in a digital world. The speed of which is fast gaining momentum, and that too as a critical disruptive change agent. Interestingly, this is happening despite the existence of a digital divide, which I discussed in one of my previous articles.

That this trend is so recent has also been underscored by the above A.T. Kearney Report. It reemphasized, the way we interact has changed more in the past 10 years than in the previous 50, and this change is reshaping the society itself. It’s hard to believe that apps, social media, and everything that surrounds them date back to no earlier than 2007. With the expansion of interconnected Internet-enabled devices, the boundaries between the real and the virtual are increasingly getting more obscure.

When it comes to pharma industry, as various research studies highlight, an intriguing cautious approach for embracing digital prevails, unlike many other industrial sectors. This is despite facing numerous challenges in navigating through external business environment, and meeting stakeholders’ changing expectations.

“But the industry has now reached a tipping point: it has to put an end to hiding behind the challenges of engaging with its stakeholders digitally and stop treating digital as an add-on to existing operations. Rather, it needs to embrace a digital first engagement model with fundamental consequences for its organization and capabilities,” suggests the above A.T. Kearney report.

This fast-evolving disruptive change, I reckon, can only be ignored at one’s own peril. Nonetheless, the good news is, some pharma players have now slowly but surely, started embracing digital to transform their business processes, in search of excellence.

‘Digital India’ initiative to facilitate the process:

Recognizing the increasing importance of digital even across the public space, on July 2, 2015, ‘Digital India’ campaign was launched by the Government of India. This is intended to ensure the availability of public services for all, by making everybody in the country digitally-empowered. The campaign is expected to make India a leader in digitally delivering health, education and banking services, according to information released by the government.

It is generally expected that the creation of a robust digital ecosystem within the country, would facilitate the Indian pharma players, as well, while leveraging this state of the art technology for a quantum leap in business productivity.

The current status – Global pharma industry:

The July 11, 2017 article titled, “Pharma turns to big data to gauge care and pricing”, appeared in the Financial Times, highlighted an interesting point. It described, how the global pharma industry, which has been slow in responding to the fast-evolving digital environment, is now realizing its critical importance. This reckoning gets more strengthened, as it confronts tough external challenges, such as pricing pressures, huge volume of patient data, and more empowered consumers. The article also points out, how digitization has started changing the way pharma players used to interact with doctors, patients and other important stakeholders.

The seriousness in approach of several global pharma majors in leveraging digital technology, to take a quantum leap in the business productivity, is fast increasing. It is evident from the leading drug makers seeking out different skills and personality traits in employees to lead such digital transformation.

Moving towards this direction, Germany based Merck appointed its first chief digital officer, last year. The person holds a degree in biomedical engineering, with a tech background. Following a somewhat different approach, Boehringer Ingelheim – Europe’s biggest private pharma player, hired a new Chief Financial Officer from Lufthansa, who oversees a new digital “lab”, recruiting data specialists and software developers.

Similarly, Swiss drug major – Novartis, also appointed its global head of digital business development and licensing. The head of Human Resources of the company has reportedly expressed, “We’re already seeing how real-time data capture can help analyze patient populations and demographics, to make it easier to recruit patients for clinical trials, and how real-time data-capture devices, like connected sensors and patient engagement apps, are helping to create remote clinical trials that aren’t site-dependent.”

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) too, reportedly employs more than 50 people to run webinars with physicians – a “multichannel media team” that did not exist five years ago. It has also begun hiring astrophysicists to work in research and development, keen to deploy their ability to visualize huge data sets. According to GSK, these qualities are especially important as the company seeks to use artificial intelligence to help spot patterns and connections amid a mass of information.

That said, global pharma industry still has a considerable distance to cover before it exploits digital technology as successfully and automatically as many other sectors, the article concludes.

The current status – Indian pharma industry:

Veeva Systems Inc.– a leader in the cloud based software for the global life sciences industry, has well captured in a recent report the current status of the Indian pharma industry on the adaptation of digital technology in business.

The report titled ‘The Veeva 2016 Industry Survey: Digital in Indian Pharma’ focuses on the current state of application of digital technology in the business processes of pharma companies in the country. The survey represents the views of respondents from commercial excellence, marketing, sales and IT at domestic and multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in India.

It highlighted, though the pharma companies have remained mostly Rep centric, several of them now realize the importance of increasing focus on customer engagement. Moreover, while the desired access to important physicians has gone down, expectations of the Health Care Professionals (HCPs) have increased, significantly. Alongside, the Government is bringing in more regulations, besides price controls.

The report also captures, though digital technology is slowly making way in the pharma marketing tool kit, it has been more an incremental effort to various Sales Force Excellence projects of the respective companies.

The key findings of the study are as follows:

  • Nearly two-thirds of respondents agree digital is yet to become a part of their overall pharma DNA, and one-third believe digital is well integrated within their organization.
  • While companies have initiated digital activities in various silos, one-third of the respondents believe these are tactical in nature, rather than strategic.
  • 21 percent of respondents feel digital should be driven by management, along with 24 percent voting for Digital Marketing. However, with customer relationship at the core of business activities, 31 believe Sales Force and Commercial Excellence are also responsible for the transition.
  • With integrated digital strategy, pharma companies aim to increase customer touch points through multichannel (93 percent) and improve customer engagement (79 percent). The other benefits of integrated approach are a greater competitive advantage, reduce execution gaps, improve content creation and delivery, and enrich customer data.
  • 59 percent of the respondents believe the industry will see a digital transformation in the next 1-3 years.
  • 69 percent of survey respondents agree it’s time for Indian pharma to think about digital strategically.

The top two challenges that pharma companies face in institutionalizing digital were identified as

  • Organizational readiness
  • Lack of digital as a strategy

This latest India specific survey brings to the fore that pharma players will have to move over from patching up old systems or building incremental solutions. They need to realize that digital opportunity is not an incremental approach.

Keeping this in perspective, the study suggests that pharma companies’ approach to digital needs to change substantially in India. This is essential to truly leverage the power of digital that will open the new possibilities to more meaningfully engage, communicate, and be relevant to all the stakeholders for business success.

The traditional face to face “visits” are just not enough for desired productivity, and deriving an adequate return on investments. On the contrary, a time has come to critically evaluate whether various Sales Force Excellence programs are  producing increasingly diminishing rate of return on investments, Therefore, this communication process ought to be augmented with innovative digital interventions, for the reasons explained earlier.

With a few organizations leading the way, digital is expected to become a mainstream conversation, ultimately. Thus, Indian pharma players need to think about digital from a long-term perspective, as opposed to the current way of setting short term goals, which may actually become barriers in your digital success, as the survey concludes.

Conclusion:

Pharmaceutical industry, in general, is yet to keep pace with many other sectors, first in acknowledging the game changing power of digital technology, and then adopting it with a crafty application of mind. Nevertheless, the good news is, some drug companies, especially in the global arena, have increased their focus in this area, as elaborated above.

In India, as the recent survey indicates, over 66 percent of respondents admit that digital is yet to become a part of the overall pharma DNA, while the remaining ones believe that digital is well integrated within their organization. Interestingly, even in that group, many would require moving over from patching up old systems or building incremental solutions. It is important for them to realize, sooner, that digital opportunity is not an incremental approach.

‘Digital India’ campaign of the incumbent Government, assures fast strengthening of desirable digital ecosystem in the country. Expected consequential strong wind on the sail must be made use of, effectively. As the saying goes ‘better late than never’, pharma’s late realization of the game changing power of digital technology is much better than no realization at all, which many naysayers indirectly pontificate, of course, under a facade.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Relevance of Artificial Intelligence In Creative Pharma Marketing

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Keeping pace with the challenge of change globally, the macro environment in the pharma business is also undergoing a metamorphosis. This includes areas, such as, strong product pricing pressure, dwindling new product pipelines, increasing operating expenses, stringent regulatory requirements, rising stakeholder expectations, and several others. All these developments collectively, are making the drug companies, both global and local, feel the tailwind of various intensities, in their efforts to achieve the corporate financial goals, more than ever before.

Despite this continuous change, most pharma players’ overall strategic business models to meet with the increasing economic expectations of the shareholders, other investors and the stock markets, have hardly undergone any path breaking, radical, or disruptive advancement, just yet. This includes even the most critical interface between an organization and the consumers – pharma sales and marketing.

That said, it is not uncommon, either, to witness some sporadic initiatives of major business process reengineering with sophisticated digital applications. Interestingly, all these measures are mostly replacements or for realignment of the same age old, and traditional strategic pharma sales and marketing models. Most of these are aimed at adding more speed and accuracy to the same business core process, along with ensuring greater management information and control to support the decision making process.

Despite this palpable environmental shift, general inertia within the pharma industry to respond to all these, with commensurate strategic game plans of surgical accuracy, is glaring. Currently, the general response to this transformation is mostly reactive and traditionally defensive in nature, rather than proactive, as the overall business environment around the industry keep becoming increasingly demanding. Most pharma players may not, but the time keeps galloping ahead, offering a mind boggling rapid advances in disruptive technological innovations – the potential game changers for its several business domains.

In the midst of such all-embracing changes, yet another disruptive technology – ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’, is prompting many business leaders to step on to a brand new paradigm, making use of AI to the extent required, especially, while preparing a detail strategic roadmap for the business with high precision.

A clear intent to seize this moment is now visible in many industries, though in varying degrees and scale, but surely it is happening. This is vindicated by the gradual increase in demand for AI, across a wide variety of its application areas.

Marketing to turn upside down?

On October 26, 2016 an article published in ‘The Huffington Post’ on how AI could ‘Turn the Marketing World Upside Down’ indicated its disruptive impact on the way innovative marketing strategies are conceived, created and implemented on the ground.

The article gave an interesting example of how paradigm shift follows a predictable pattern of development that starts with substitution, followed by augmentation, modification, and finally redefinition.

For example, the evolution of today’s smartphones also followed the same pattern, as follows:

  • First replaced simpler landline phones
  • Then adapted with the addition of a camera
  • And finally redefined “phone” altogether, not just by replacing cameras, pagers, and many functions of personal computers, but by being able to perform with great precision an incredible number of various other serious requirements, well supported by related digital apps.

With the application of AI in marketing, the conventional ball game right from conception, to charting out and execution of marketing strategies, will be catapulted to a new and fascinating orbit altogether. I have no intent to romanticizing it. This is going to happen sooner than later, as we move on.

Artificial Intelligence (AI):

In a simple and commonly understandable way ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI)’ can be explained as the theory and development of computer systems, which are able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as, machine learning, visual perception, image processing, speech recognition, decision-making, and language processing, besides many others.

In the Hollywood film industry, several sci-fi movies have already been made, based on AI as the core theme. Some of these international blockbuster films are ‘The Terminator’, ‘Transcendence’, ‘The Matrix’, ‘Ex Machina’, ‘Ex Machina’ or even ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, among many others.

Some concern, but…:

Alongside, a serious concern has also been expressed by some global icons, that the evolution of AI could reach a dangerous threshold, where mankind will no longer remain in control of the creation of its own progeny, besides other living beings. This could, as they believe, jeopardize the continuity of an entire civilization, at least, in its present form.

In 2014, globally acclaimed Professor Stephen Hawking commented in an  interview with the BBC: “Humans, limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded by A.I.”

In fact, in July 2015, Professor Hawking reportedly joined Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and many others, warning that AI can potentially be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

In the same year, even Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, reportedly expressed his concerns, saying, “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence…”

On the other hand, despite such apprehensions, AI based technology keeps evolving at a rapid pace, with the funding in AI research taking giant leaps forward. The technology has already found its cutting edge extensive applications in several warfare. We now hear almost every day about unmanned drones not just doing defense surveillance, but destroying strategic targets with jaw-dropping precision. Or for that matter, use of robots has become rather common to diffusive explosive devices of various kinds, intensity, and planted in important places to kill people. As reported by the media, ‘autonomous and self-aware robots to diminish the need for human soldiers to risk their lives.’

Google’s driverless cars also use similar AI technology offering advanced analytics-based algorithms, machine learning and deep learning processes, which could well be another game changing example in this area.

The benefits far outweigh the risks?

Be that as it may, the benefits of AI seem to far outweigh the risks, in various areas. This includes its strategic applications in the pharma industry.

This gets vindicated by the February 2016 research report of ‘Markets and Markets’ (claimed as the world’s second largest firm in publishing premium market research reports, per year), which estimated that AI market would record a turnover of around US$ 5.05 Billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 53.65 percent between 2015 and 2020. This market is currently dominated by the ‘Machine Learning’ technology, as it provides the computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed, and are capable of updating themselves when exposed to new data.

Some of the key players operating in the artificial intelligence market are IBM Corp. (U.S.), Microsoft Corp. (U.S.), Google Inc. (U.S.), IPsoft (U.S.), FinGenius Corp. (U.K.), Rocket Fuel Inc. (U.S.), Mobileye N.V. (Israel), Kensho Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Sentient Technologies (U.S.), and Zephyr Health (U.S.), the report revealed.

AI in pharma:

Over the last decade, AI is being increasingly used by various industries, as a key support to the strategic decision making process, in various areas of business. Understandably, in pharma its use has been rather limited, as on date. Nevertheless, there are several key domains within the pharma industry, where effective use of AI has the potential to be a critical performance enhancer. These areas include, not just in discovery research, or in clinical trials, or in sales and marketing, but also in setting the right strategic direction for the company.

However, in this article, I shall focus mainly on the application of AI in pharma marketing.

AI in pharma marketing:

Although AI is now being sparsely used, it is expected to be more widely used in pharma research and development. It also shows tremendous potential in developing creative sales and marketing strategies, with great accuracy.

So far, pharma marketing strategies are based more on the qualitative data, some traditional quantitative data, and a huge dose of marketers ‘gut feel’. It continues to happen, when the world, including India, is moving towards innovative data driven decision models. If one chooses to, now a pharma marketer also can make effective use of an abundantly available wide variety of quality data to feel the pulse of the markets, consumers and any identified issues, with great precision. Thereafter, based on these real life hard facts, the team needs to put in place for implementation, with an open and innovative mind, a creative sales and marketing game plan, to achieve the set goals.

Would that mean, a pharma marketer should necessarily be an expert in a huge volume of data analysis? I don’t guess so. ‘Machine Learning’, ‘Deep Learning’ and other analytics-based processes of AI can help them enormously to do so.

AI based analytics has now been proved to be far more reliable than any human analysis of the humongous volume of different kinds of quality data. Doing so is even beyond the capacity of any conventional computers that a marketing professional generally uses for this purpose.

The prime requirement for this purpose, therefore, is not just huge volume of data per se, but good quality of a decent volume of data, that a state of the art analytics would be able to meaningfully deliver, that is tailor made to meet the specific requirements of pharma marketers to create a cutting edge marketing strategy.

Areas of AI use in pharma – some examples:

AI will be extremely useful to arrive at the most effective strategic options available, with pros and cons, to achieve the core sales and marketing objectives of the organization, both long and short term.

It can also add immense value right at the decision making stages to determine the key ingredients of an effective strategic plan in a number of critical areas, such as:

  • Arriving at the optimal product-portfolio-mix with the right expense tag attached to each brand
  • Deep learning about market dynamics, customer behavior and their interplay
  • Matching unmet customer needs with enhanced and differentiated value offerings – both tangible and intangible
  • Effective bundling of brand offerings and associated services for each patient segment
  • Selecting the right mix of communication channels, including social media, to ensure maximum productivity in reaching each category of the target audience
  • Detailed strategic blueprint for each type of stakeholder engagement, along with related value offerings
  • Arriving at the best possible resource-mix with the available budget
  • Real-time monitoring of each strategic action steps, consistently, making quick changes on the run, if and when required

Pharma AI platforms are already available:

There are a number of AI platforms now available for the pharmaceutical companies, across the world. For example, in September 2015, by a Press Release, Eularis – a leading provider of next-generation advanced marketing analytics to the Pharma industry, announced the release of the E-VAI, the latest development in sophisticated machine learning technology delivering next-generation analytics and decision making for Pharma marketers globally.

Another recent example of AI in this area, as well, is ‘Salesforce Einstein’. It delivers advanced AI capabilities in sales, service, and marketing, and enables anyone to build AI-powered apps that get smarter with every interaction. According to Salesforce, it will enable everyone in every role and industry to use AI to be their best.

Conclusion:

The use of AI in pharma is still in its nascent stage today. However, for a sustainable business excellence in its various domains, AI is increasingly proving to be of great relevance, now and also in the future. Sales and marketing is one such domains.

With the passage of time, both the macro and micro pharma business operating environments are changing fast, primarily driven by changing expectations of stakeholders, the public at large, and disruptive algorithmic technical innovations, based on advanced science, statistics and mathematics.

The scope to effectively utilize the full potential of advanced algorithmic technical tools, is huge. It is easier now to capture a massive volume of pharma related high quality raw data of different kinds, for tailor-made innovative analysis, with the help of AI based analytics, while creating cutting-edge strategic game plans.

Nonetheless, pharma players apparently continue to chart the same strategic frontier where there are many footsteps to follow. Many of them have restricted themselves to no more than digitally re-engineering the same overall business processes that they have been already following, since long. Just a few of them are making use of the leading edge analytics involving AI, such as ‘Machine Learning’, ‘Deep Learning’, ‘Visual Perception’, ‘Image Processing, besides many others, which can be more ‘patient-centric’ and at the same help deliver a strong business performance.

Thus, quicker adaptation, and thereafter continuous scaling up applications of high quality AI based analytics in creative pharma marketing, are not just of immense relevance today, they also bring with them the commensurate potential for sustainable excellence in financial performance of the organization, fueled by critical early mover advantage.

By: Tapan J. Ray   

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Patient Services: No Longer An Optional Competitive Driver

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The emerging global trend of patients’ demand for greater engagement in their treatment decision making process, could well be a game changer in the prescription demand generation process for pharma brands, even in India, and in not too distant future. This would assume a critical importance not just from the patients’ perspective, but also for the pharma companies and other health care players, for commercial success.

The fast penetration of Internet services is increasingly becoming a great enabler for the patients to get to know, learn and obtain more and more information about their fitness, overall health, various illnesses, disease symptoms, available diagnostic tests, including progress in various clinical trials, besides the drugs and their prices – and all these just with several clicks.

Thus, equipped with relevant information from various dependable and user-friendly sources from the cyberspace, patients have started asking probing questions about the risks and benefits of various types of treatment decisions and diagnostics tests, when recommended by the doctors. At times, especially in the Western world, such interactions even lead to changes, additions or deletions in the choice of therapy, including drugs, devices and diagnostics tests.

Even in a developing country, such as India, many of such types of patients would no longer want to play just a passive role in their disease treatment or health and fitness improvement processes. Although, they would continue to want the doctors to take a final decision on their treatment, but only after having meaningful interactions with them.

A 2016 Report: 

An April 2016 report of Accenture titled, “The Patient is IN: Pharma’s Growing Opportunity in Patient Services,” finds that the patients in the top global pharma markets want and expect consistent services coming from the pharma companies.

These patients are increasingly seeking more services from the pharma players before they are treated for a disease, regardless of the types of illnesses they have. However, it’s more important to note that patients’ responses during this survey have clearly indicated that while they highly value the services they use, a vast majority of them do not know about the services, which, as the pharma companies claim, are already available for them.

The Accenture study covered 203 executives at pharmaceutical companies, 100 in the United States and 103 in Europe (8 countries) from October to November 2015, covering seven therapeutic areas: heart, lung, brain, cancer, immune system, bones, and hormones/metabolism. Annual revenues of the surveyed companies ranged from nearly US$ 1 billion to more than US$ 25 billion.

Some important findings:

Following are some key findings of this report:

1. Patient services are delivering value with a significant increase in focus, and investment expected over the next two years, with 85 percent of companies are raising their investment in patient-centric capabilities over the next 18 months. However, the companies have only become slightly more patient-centric over the past two years. 9 of the following top 10 services are attracting above average business impact, which is an increase over hopping 73 percent that currently offer such patient services:

  • Disease education
  • Patient segmentation and insight
  • Patient experience management
  • Medication delivery/support
  • Patient risk assessment
  • Wellness information and health management
  • Nurse/ physician/patient access portal
  • Medication/ treatment reconciliation
  • Patient outreach, reminders, and scheduling
  • Adherence program management

2. Digital platforms play a dominant role in making patients aware of the services offered. Thus, companies are going big with investments in digital engagement technologies and supporting analytics, with 95 percent of companies planning to invest in patient engagement technologies over the next 18 months.

3. Much of this investment (but not all) is aligned to what patients value. 50 percent of the following top 10 fastest growing services are perceived by the patients delivering significant value:

  • Benefit coverage and access support
  • Health coach/counselor
  • Adherence program management
  • Co-payment assistance programs
  • Remote monitoring
  • Affordability and reimbursement support
  • Nursing support services
  • Reward/ incentive programs
  • Medication delivery/support
  • Patient outreach, reminders, and scheduling

Out of these, ‘medication delivery and support’, ‘remote patient monitoring’ and ‘adherence program management’ were highly valued by 85, 79 and 77 percentages of patients, respectively.

To give an example, pharma companies in the United States use digital as the primary channel for direct communications for patients. They use social media (51 percent) and web pages (49 percent) to market patient services. The use of TV is around 53 percent.

The challenge:

Let me re-emphasize here, as on date, just 19 percent of the surveyed patients are familiar with already available services meant for them. This had happened, despite respective pharma companies’ basic reliance and dependence on health care professionals for dissemination of their respective well-targeted services.

Thus, lack of awareness among patients about the services provided, throws a major challenge to pharma players to accurately ascertain, finding out effective ways, and then continuously measure and evaluate the impact of those services on outcomes, to further hone the process. Such a mechanism needs to be put in place before channeling further major investments in this important space.

Key takeaways:

Following are the key takeaways from this study:

  • Patient services will become a competitive driver and are no longer optional for pharmaceutical companies.
  • Investment should be led by what patients value, but measuring business value is critical to sustainability.
  • Clear organizational and operating strategy must be in place to ensure companies are structured for success.
  • Effective communication to patients the economic value of services, is central to healthcare professional interactions.

Patient-services strategy:

Accenture’s North American Managing Director of patient-services epitomized the findings of the report during its release on April 2016 by saying, “In this changing competitive environment, the question will no longer be if life sciences companies should offer these services, but rather which ones, and how they should be implemented.”

Thus, development of a robust patient-services strategy by the pharma players, that syncs well with the patients’ needs on the ground, will be absolutely necessary for the pharma players, as we step into the future. More importantly, there should be an effective alignment of the strategy with different health care professionals, through effective communication of various types and kinds, to ensure that the brand value offerings, well supported by carefully tailored patients’ services, generate a synergistic outcome for the target group.

Conclusion:

Patient services are increasingly assuming importance of a cutting-edge competitive driver of success in the pharma business. Accordingly, various types of such services have already started attracting greater investments, especially in the Western part of the globe, and are soon expected to become a key competitive driver of success in the healthcare market of India too.

However, while crafting an effective patient-services strategy, one-size-fit-all type of approach won’t work. This is primarily because, not just the service requirements would vary within patients or patient groups, the method of the preferred service delivery mechanism would also vary. For example, some patients may prefer to engage with their doctors for this purpose, some others’ preference could well be Internet based interactive digital platforms, or through a smart app available in a smartphone.

Thus, to succeed in this area for business excellence, pharma marketers must find out the most effective ways to offer these services to each types or groups of patients.

Moreover, the patient services strategy should be an ongoing exercise, as the target groups’ needs of the types of services, and preferred delivery platforms for the same would also keep changing over time.

In India too, quite slowly though, but steadily, the process of arriving at treatment decisions for the patients is undergoing a metamorphosis. Taking a fast mover advantage in the country, in a big way and now, would help reaping a rich harvest, in the near future.

Are Indian pharma players too taking note of this shifting paradigm for sustainable business excellence?

By: Tapan J. Ray 

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion. 

 

Pharma In 2016 Rio Olympics

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On August 4, 2016, the ‘Adweek’ – a well-known weekly American advertising-trade publication, reported that even a day before the games began, the national ad sales revenue of just one major network in ‘2016 Rio Olympics’ had set a new record for itself, exceeding a never before turnover of US$ 1.2 billion. This figure is believed to be the most of any network for any media event in the history of the United States, and includes broadcast, cable and digital advertising.

The strongest advertising categories include automotive, beverages, telecommunications, insurance, movie studios and pharmaceuticals, as the advertisers were exceptionally bullish on Rio Games, the report highlighted.

Another report, published in the August 9, 2016 edition of ‘U. S. News’, states that the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also aired US$ 13.6 million in campaign commercials during this Olympic games, far exceeding her nearest rival, seeking to reach the millions of television viewers who can’t skip past the commercials as they watch live coverage of the Olympics. This example underscores the perceived importance of Olympic events to various types and genres of advertisers.

My article will focus on this new found interest of many global pharma companies, their level of participation, with an idea of approximate expenditure to be incurred to run various types of ad campaigns in such well-awaited global events, held once in every four years.

The key advantages and the potential:

One of the key advantages of advertisements during Olympic games is their much larger captive audience and eyeball grabbing power, in every respect, both global and local. This, in turn, offers an attractive opportunity to the advertisers to exploit its immense potential for shaping and re-shaping public opinion and preferences, on various target areas.

Probably for this reason, a wider spectrum of new advertisers, including pharma players have now started favoring this event more than ever before.

Entry of pharma:

According to available reports, about 20 pharma brands and companies ran 293 TV ads during the coverage of Rio Olympic games. Some of these companies ran brand advertisements, while some others selected non-brand disease awareness campaigns, or in a very few instances – both.

According to real time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv, pharma contributed US$ 45 million and occupied the mid-space of the table for blockbuster TV advertisers, during the 17-day Rio events.

Two types of marketing strategies followed:

In Rio Olympics pharma companies had opted for primarily two different types of marketing strategies, as follows:

  • Product branding
  • Corporate branding, mainly through disease awareness

Global majors such as, Pfizer (for pain management – Lyrica and anti-inflammatory – Xeljanz), Novo Nordisk (Antidiabetic – Victoza), Bayer and Johnson & Johnson (anticoagulant – Xarelto) and Lundbeck and Takeda (antidepressant – Trintellix), appeared to be brand focused.

Whereas, companies such as, Merck and Mylan were disease awareness focused. Pfizer seemingly opted for both product branding and R&D focused corporate branding.

‘Product Branding’ versus ‘Corporate Branding’:

Product branding is defined as a marketing strategy wherein a business promotes and markets an individual product without the company name being at the center in the advertising campaigns.

Corporate branding, on the other hand, is broadly defined and explained as, the practice of promoting the brand name of a corporate entity, as opposed to specific products or services. The activities and thinking that go into corporate branding are different from product and service branding, because the scope of a corporate brand is typically much broader.

The success parameters:

A product branding is considered successful when it pushes up both the top and the bottom lines of the brand, with a commensurate increase in its top of mind recall and market share.

Whereas, a corporate branding is considered successful, when consumers hear or see the name of the company they will associate with a unique value and positive experiences. No matter what product or service the corporation offers, the corporate name is always an influence.

If I am to cite just one example out of many, and outside the pharma industry, I would say, ‘Apple’ has been established as a powerful corporate brand that focuses on the strength of its name as much as the features of any ‘Apple’ products.

Thus, for any successful corporate brand, the name would immediately evoke a positive reaction in the consumers’ mind, without any detailed list of product features, and for which many consumers would be willing to pay even a premium price, without any grudge or grumble.

Those who kept away from hard selling of a brand:

In Rio Olympics, as stated above, according to recent reports, some large pharma companies, interestingly, preferred to keep themselves away from hard selling of any of their brands. They, on the contrary, chose to make use of this powerful event to facilitate much wider public engagement with important and interesting health issues, like disease awareness, through craftily produced TV clips. The key intent is, of course, enhancing their corporate image to the public at large, for sustainable and long term business excellence.

A few such examples, as witnessed during Rio Olympics, are as follows:

  • Merck ran an eyeball grabbing, top class and emotional disease awareness ad for HPV vaccinations.
  • Mylan ran its “Face Your Risk” ad. This clip advises people with allergens to talk to their doctor about a prescription treatment for severe reactions, because every six minutes, someone with life-threatening food allergies is sent to the hospital.

Pfizer, in addition to brand promotion, also ran an interesting, yet fact based campaign, titled “Before it Became a Medicine”. This ad narrates an emotive story of bringing a medicine to life, which is no different from any other process of creation. It requires innovation, imagination, and restless perseverance in the face of obstacles, both expected and unforeseen.

One is a double-edged sword:

Strong high profile brand promotion in the global events such as Rio Olympics, could well be perceived as a double edged sword, having both the up and the downsides.

The upside is of course a strong boost in the sales and profit of the concerned brands. However, there is also a significant downside. When the details of huge pharma marketing expenditure, just on TV ads and also for only a 17- day event though important, would come to public knowledge, it could add more fuel to the fire on the ongoing public criticism towards humongous marketing expenditure, incurred by some pharma players, which at times exceeds the same for even R&D.

This is important, as a very large number of different stakeholders, including the patients, firmly believe that such ‘unnecessary’ expenditures on brand marketing, are ultimately passed on to the final consumers or the payers in terms of high pricing of those brands. Whereas, the possibility of triggering such type negative public opinion, with similar ads and during the similar events, with corporate brand or disease awareness campaigns, I guess, would be rather slim or improbable.

Let me hasten to add, I strongly believe that sales and marketing are absolutely necessary for pharma brands, just as any other branded consumer durables or non-durables. Nevertheless, I would also not brazenly ignore the prevailing reality, and the public optics associated with this sensitive issue, in any way.

How much does it cost?

To answer this question, I would try to give just a feel of the type of deep pocket that an interested pharma advertiser would require to have to get involved on such interesting ball game. During Rio Olympic games, the top three high spending pharma brands, reportedly, were as follows:

  • Pfizer (the pain medication Lyrica): US$ 9.1 million
  • Pfizer (the anti-inflammatory Xeljanz): US$ 5.7 million
  • Novo Nordisk (GLP-1 diabetes treatment Victoza, which featured Olympic gold medal basketball player Dominque Wilkins): US$ 9.2 million

It is worth noting that the top spending brands for consumer product such as Chrysler, spent US$ 25 million on one commercial, along with US$ 15.2 million on another. Similarly, Samsung spent US$ 17.1 million on one ad and US$ 12 million on another one.

Is there any right approach?

Instead of trying to pontificate on what sort of approach is right or wrong for pharma companies in these global events, I would only elucidate, what type of marketing approach could possibly be able to create and leave a stronger and long term residual impact on the viewers’ mind, considering the prevailing global scenario and the general sentiment towards the pharma companies, in general.

I reckon, in the events like the Olympics, it is possible for a pharma player to reap a rich harvest and get a long-term dividend with media outreach, carefully keeping away from hard-selling of clearly identifiable brands. The well-created campaigns may focus primarily on the softer aspects of public health care, such as, caring for patients, disease awareness, making life more enjoyable while fighting a disease, bringing newer drugs for better life, or even achievements in the space of corporate social responsibility.

Conclusion:

Global events such as Rio Olympics, could be well leveraged by the individual pharma players, especially to revamp the generally declining public image for greater overall business predictability and sustainability.

The types of corporate branding that some of us had witnessed in Rio Olympics, have the potential to significantly help achieving this objective.

The realization of the fast declining negative public image of pharma, in general, appears to have dawned on its global trade organizations only now. This has indeed been a long saga, though many pharma players still ignore it, rather unabashedly.

The broader impact of the creation of a positive and robust corporate public image with direct connects with consumers through the relevant ads such as on diseases awareness, could be profound, also for a sustainable business growth, even in a country like India.

Thus, the entry of pharma companies in the widely viewed global events, such as the 2016 Rio Olympics, unravels yet another new strategic platform for many other players. Its multiple judicial use, in tandem with other business blueprints, could facilitate the industry to effectively neutralize and navigate through the strong headwind of negative public perception, while managing the challenge of change.

By: Tapan J. Ray 

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.