Gaining HCP Insights & Engagement Post-Covid
At the height of the COVID-19 outbreak many non-essential healthcare services were stopped in order to free up capacity to treat COVID-19 patients. Due to this there are now backlogs to access treatments across a number of therapy areas such as oncology (particularly detection of cancers) and non-essential surgeries. This is just one example of the pressure HCPs are under and therefore engaging with them increasingly difficult.
A recent report from Accenture found that while companies have changed their methods of engagement, they need to do more to better understand and meet the expectations of HCPs and their patients. Pharma and medtech organisations can shift their communications to a blend of virtual and face-to-face to fit in with HCPs’ busy schedules.
Digital communications such as email and social media provide an opportunity to go beyond information sharing, to gain insights. Social monitoring, followed by strategic email campaigns can be useful tools to understand and share content that is useful and relevant to your target audience.
Virtual meetings and advisory boards
The switch from physical to digital meetings following COVID-19 has been rapid – over 60% of engagements through 2021 were delivered digitally vs face to face and this trend looks set to continue. When considering how best to balance this approach it is important to think about these 2 considerations:
- Objective of the engagement – How likely is it that this objective can be achieved using the chosen engagement channel? Most objectives can be just as ably achieved using digital engagement platforms as face-to-face but this should be checked.
- Number of and proximity of attendees to each other – Avoiding unnecessary travel time with digital engagement is helpful, but for a discussion that involves a small multi-disciplinary hospital team, this may be best served by a face-to-face meeting
Advisory boards can be a useful forum to gather insights from HCPs. Their versatility to be delivered virtually or face-to-face means you’ll be able to pick the approach that best suits the group. When delivered virtually this avoids the burden of travel for participants, and can sometimes be timetabled to avoid the need to cancel clinics – especially as online meetings are usually most effective when kept under 3 hours in duration.
This type of engagement can also go further with digital engagement and insights; simple online surveys ahead of the meeting can help focus the discussion to make the best use of a shorter meeting timeframe. This approach can also be used to understand initial consensus (or lack of) on particularly contentious topics on the upcoming agenda.
Medical conferences
Despite the pressure on their time and the inevitable rationalisation of extra educational and networking activities, many HCPs will continue to prioritise key medical conferences as a minimum. Exhibiting and/or sponsoring here provides many opportunities to engage and gain insights from HCPs. While not all activities involve pure digitisation, many lend themselves to extending their use using digital platforms after the event (e.g. video of conference highlights).
In addition to an eye-catching exhibition stand to help generate an audience in the exhibition hall, here are some of our tips for maximising engagement and insight generation: