New pharma

Health care professionals have more experience in selecting and processing digital information than the industry has experience in making it! Whereas information for healthcare professionals is basically about reliable and valid information, the format of it should be both appealing and interactively enough to gain and hold the interest of the professionals.

..

Indeed: “Pharma companies are far from realizing their App market potential,” is the conclusion of research done. See here. Seven in ten doctors even have a self-tracking patient, says Manhattan reserach, quoted here. See some other statistics on tele- and mhealth here. Health care is moving towards integrated care in eHealth: 76% of Patients Would Choose Telehealth Over Human Contact with their care provider! (survey).

..

There is a definite expectation among health care professionals about the impact of digital information to the quality of care. Beyond information on the drug itself, one is definitely in need of information about both background and consequences of using the drug in the perspective of practice of care: how would the drug facilitate the process of care, patients’ compliance, outcome of care and both patients’ and physicians’ satisfaction with their use.

..

Based upon the survey results above, one would like to add the third dimension: development!
Development of dynamic edetails is more crucial than to produce a good looking app. Apps need to further interactivity and engagement. They must stimulate the journey of the professional through the information about the drug, leading to connectedness both for persons of reference and for further information. Indeed the very relationship with other (multichannel) sites and communications is relevant to the attractiveness to target professionals.

..

But still another aspect is crucial to success in the long run: how does the organization respond to the challenges that edetailing poses to the firm’s current routines of promotion? Creating an app is one. But to handle it in promotion to doctors and other health professionals demands internal training and organization.

..It means that the design of the app and its use needs to follow the pace of individual learning and of internal change and development; a change that would also relate to development of internal culture of orientation: from an “inside-out product orientation”, to an “outside-in orientation on best practice of therapy”!