The omnichannel strategy

Embracing digital ecosystems for enhanced HCP interactions

Digital pharma engagement strategies
Tushar Singh

Senior Consultant, Consulting HLS

Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pharmaceutical sector’s shift to a digital-first engagement approach. The synergy of digital and offline channels improves relationships with healthcare professionals (HCPs). AI-driven solutions enhance personalized communication, empowering sales reps to strategize their actions. Read on to learn how the pharmaceutical sector’s digital-first, AI-powered approach elevates HCP interactions and strengthens relationships, improving patient care overall through customized, data-driven insights.
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Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the pharmaceutical sector’s shift to a digital-first engagement approach. The synergy of digital and offline channels improves relationships with healthcare professionals (HCPs). AI-driven solutions enhance personalized communication, empowering sales reps to strategize their actions. Read on to learn how the pharmaceutical sector’s digital-first, AI-powered approach elevates HCP interactions and strengthens relationships, improving patient care overall through customized, data-driven insights.

The pharmaceutical sector’s engagement strategies have evolved significantly over the past five years. The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a transition from face-to-face interactions to a digital-first approach. It’s important to blend digital and offline channels to better connect with healthcare professionals (HCPs).

There was an initial fear that digital transformation would displace sales reps. However, technology only bolstered effectiveness, providing more personalized and customized communication methods.

Our approach

We develop AI-driven solutions that seamlessly blend digital and face-to-face interactions for pharmaceutical companies, empowering them to better connect with HCPs.

By helping these companies create tailored content based on individual HCP preferences, we enhance the effectiveness of their engagement efforts. Utilizing engagement metrics, such as Email Open Time Slots and Depth of scroll, allows us to pinpoint HCP preferences, enabling more relevant and timely communications across digital and face-to-face channels.

Additionally, we are developing AI-based systems and algorithms to guide sales representatives on their next best actions. This might, for example, include assisting the sales representative in choosing the relevant platform for the next touch point, such as recommending a Zoom or Teams call over a face-to-face meeting or attending an upcoming webinar where the HCP can share his/her thoughts on the latest indication’s efficacy for different patient groups.

Another scenario could involve the system suggesting adjustments to the schedule, such as rescheduling a face-to-face meeting to the next quarter if the HCP is expected to attend a seminar organized by the pharmaceutical company. This proactive approach helps prevent overwhelming HCPs with excessive content or touchpoints and ensures more efficient and meaningful interactions.

Our emphasis lies in meticulously addressing the evolving requirements of each product-market combination’s dynamic needs and homing in on precisely valued ones. For instance, the oncology therapy area experiences swift advancements. Consequently, our imperative to reassess the fundamental machine learning and decision models every six months intensifies, ensuring alignment with emerging treatments and patient care methodologies.

Using AI and machine learning in our digital strategies represents a significant advancement. It allows us to customize and personalize our approach to meet HCP preferences and the therapy area’s needs. Such an approach improves communication and strengthens the relationships between pharmaceutical companies and HCPs.

Technological solutions and data integration

In addition to traditional campaigns, various digital channels, such as display banners and alerts, are increasingly utilized. These channels generate extensive datasets that pharmaceutical companies acquire and must process effectively to extract valuable insights and define strategies for different personas. Traditional ETL and data warehousing methods aren’t adequate for managing the scale and complexity of these new datasets. This shift has led organizations to adopt cloud data warehousing and storage solutions.

Our partnership with AWS has been pivotal in addressing these challenges. Using AWS’s native services, we have significantly accelerated the processing time for raw datasets from over 20 third-party vendors, making the data readily available for initial reporting and analysis by campaign and content leads. Services like Bedrock, Athena, and CloudWatch have introduced advanced AI capabilities for digital leaders, facilitating ad hoc data queries and simplifying A/B testing processes for content and digital strategies across the board.

We build on this foundation by offering tailored solutions that adapt to a brand, therapy area, or BU’s needs and priorities. It uses AI and machine learning to sort through the combined data, finding patterns and preferences specific to each group of HCPs. This helps customize content and engagement plans while crafting unique HCP journeys, communication strategies, and key messages, ensuring every interaction is meaningful and effective.

The combination of AWS and our solution simplifies the complex and time-consuming process in areas like quick data processing, creating a common data model for easy data usage based on vendors, and experimental A/B testing for content creation and key messages. By letting companies speed up regular processes like design and conduct experiments, we help key personas channelize their efforts toward areas like engagement strategies and optimizing channel efforts. This flexibility is crucial in a fast-paced digital environment where timely course correction leads to a seamless HCP experience without fracture points in the broader HCP journey.

Data management and utilization

Digital engagement datasets from a wide array of mediums have traditionally been separated into distinct silos. With various third-party vendors providing different data streams, formats, and structures, it’s difficult to utilize these for the next level of processing or analytics without processing and merging them. This hinders the comprehensive assessment of digital performance across channels, exacerbated by regional disparities in data reporting. Therefore, the imperative of adopting an integrated approach for cohesive analysis within the digital realm is evident.

We aim to utilize digital, personal interaction, and other touchpoint datasets to optimize outreach and democratize its access across key personas on a use-case basis. AWS is vital here, providing native tools and services to create solutions like common data models, reusable data pipelines, in-built data quality checks, structured data layers for prompting, and row-level security to control access. These elements speed up the process for initial performance insights for ongoing campaigns and help gain deeper insights into digital users’ behavioral dynamics.

This strategic integration enhances the digital experience across channels by leveraging data, cloud technology, and customized accelerators to handle data complexities. This results in a simpler, better, unified analytics experience for key digital marketing personas.

KPIs and ROI

A full spectrum of indices beyond the usual KPIs is critical in pharmaceutical digital analytics. This includes the content preference and content usage index, as well as a digital affinity/engagement index specifically designed for HCPs. These indices offer a layered perspective on interaction patterns, equipping organizations to refine their engagement strategies effectively. Additionally, embracing new engagement channels like podcasts, videos, microsites, and slides enhances the reach and effectiveness of digital campaigns, building stronger connections with key stakeholders.

Although measuring return on investment in the digital domain is challenging, traditional metrics such as overall engagement, impressions, click-through rates, visits, downloads, and forwards remain vital. They provide campaign and content leaders with a solid foundation for evaluating performance.

Our digital analytics platform takes this further by promoting a streamlined approach. By concentrating on a select set of impactful key performance indicators, we empower organizations to maximize efficiency and pivot strategically, facilitating better decision-making and corrective actions.

Guardrails

Successfully transforming to an omnichannel approach involves overcoming numerous challenges. Key factors for pharma companies to consider include respecting HCP privacy and complying with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other critical regulations. Additionally, it’s crucial to implement optimization techniques that prevent burnout and establish a robust agency ecosystem for efficient data exchange. These steps are vital for navigating the complexities of the omnichannel landscape.

   
Category Subcategory Guardrail
Physician side Segmentation and preference management Create a system to sort physicians based on how they prefer to communicate (email, phone calls, or in-person meetings). Let them choose their favorite method and how often they want to be contacted.
Opt-out mechanisms Provide accessible opt-out mechanisms for physicians wishing to cease communications, ensuring prompt removal from contact databases upon request.
Consent management Maintain transparent processes for managing consent, requiring explicit consent for communications, and documenting consent status to comply with regulations.
Data side for GDPR and other issues Data governance framework Establish a data governance framework to ensure compliance with GDPR and other data privacy laws, defining policies for data collection, processing, storage, and sharing.
Data protection measures Implement data protection measures (encryption, access controls, anonymization) and conduct regular audits to safeguard sensitive information.
Consent management Adhere to informed consent principles for data collection and usage, obtaining explicit consent, and providing transparency about data usage purposes and scope.
Frequency of campaigns and optimization to reduce customer burnout Campaign cadence optimization Monitor engagement metrics to adjust communication frequency for different physician segments, aiming to prevent customer burnout.
Personalization and relevance Use segmentation to deliver personalized and relevant content, tailoring communications to physician interests and behaviors.
Multichannel orchestration Implement a strategy for seamless multichannel communication coordination, avoiding excessive communication and ensuring a cohesive experience.
NDA agreements with agencies for data exchange Contractual agreements Establish NDAs with third-party partners for data exchange, defining data sharing scope, confidentiality, and data usage restrictions.
Data security protocols Require agencies to follow stringent data security protocols and comply with regulations, assessing their security posture and reliability.
Monitoring and compliance Set up mechanisms to monitor and enforce compliance with NDA agreements, regularly reviewing data exchange practices and auditing partners.
 

Outlook

Implementing an omnichannel approach in digital pharma presents multiple challenges, including issues with data, technology, platforms, personnel, and organizational structures. Despite these obstacles, the opportunity to transform how pharmaceutical companies interact with healthcare professionals and enhance patient outcomes is significant.

The omnichannel strategy effectively integrates digital and traditional marketing. However, it demands a focused effort to navigate various challenges. These include data management issues like ensuring privacy compliance, integrating diverse data sources, and technological challenges in choosing and fine-tuning the right digital platforms.

Throughout this journey, the human factor remains pivotal. It is imperative to educate personnel on leveraging digital tools effectively, foster a culture of innovation and flexibility, and synchronize internal procedures with the requirements of omnichannel engagement. Despite the hurdles, the benefits of adopting an omnichannel approach are considerable. Using data-driven insights to offer personalized, timely, and relevant content to healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical companies can strengthen relationships, boost engagement, and ultimately enhance patient care.

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