Manhattan Research’s Mark Bard Evaluates New Marketing Technologies That Offer Exciting Opportunities for Greater Physician Access
Practitioners are “Pulling” E-Detailing Programs
Mark Bard is big on ideas, perhaps because his primary business interest – online technology in the pharmaceutical industry – is becoming a valuable complementary marketing tool for drug marketers. In an in-depth interview, The Manhattan Research strategist reviews the e-detailing technologies that offer exciting opportunities for gaining access to physicians. Bard says practitioners are pulling these technologies, because they provide critical information in a convenient form.
Q: Electronic detailing is often mentioned as a new technique to communicate with physicians. How is it working?
A: The term electronic detailing, or eDetailing, has evolved and broadened so much over the past couple of years. It used to be that electronic detailing typically meant a Web site that physicians were directed to for online promotional message. Today, eDetailing takes on different forms, from a Web-based seminar to an actual detail by a sales rep using a pen tablet and going through a pre-loaded detail. As a result, eDetailing has come to mean a lot of different things.
Q: Why so many formats?
A: Because the field is rapidly evolving, and now has many different forms. Instead of going to a Web site and pulling the information, physicians may have something in their inbox that whenever the item is opened or when they click on it, they can watch animated medical education in a movie-type format whenever they want to, and they can save it if they want to go back and watch it again. That’s eDetailing, as well. Broadly defined, the market is moving and it means a lot of different things. Some are doing well. Some are not doing so well.
Q: Is it effective technology?
A: Yes. The number of physicians using electronic detailing has grown consistently for the past five years. The reality is that there are more physicians, year after year after year, going online for eDetailing or for electronic promotion materials and information. Certain models have failed to work in the past, but the overall category of electronic detailing is working for the simple reason that physicians are pulling it.
Q: Does that mean it’s a great technology and most of the formats are good?
A: No. What’s really interesting is that when you start peeling it back a little bit, doctors are still telling the majority of the vendors and the majority of the pharmaceutical companies that there is a lot of room for improvement. What you tend to see is that most companies are taking offline promotional material and putting it into an online format, then simply inviting physicians to look at the material. It‘s like taking something well suited to a printed brochure, putting it in a PDF format, then saying, “Oh, by the way, go to this e-mail link and view the PDF version of the paper brochure we sent to you.” That’s where electronic detailing has limited benefits to a physician.
Q: Why do some eDetail formats work and some don’t?
A: I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a pharma company has a time-sensitive electronic detail, where the company has put together a program for an audio-video streaming Webinar (online seminar) promotional message on specific day at a specific time. But guess what? Your response rate is only 9 percent of those invited. The content may have been great but the physician had to show up at a certain time just to get the information. The fact is that the pharma company was trying to get a busy doctor to show up at a specific point in time, thereby limiting the event’s effectiveness or value.
Q: What’s the alternative?
A: A completely self-service model where physicians, on their terms, can literally pull the information when they want to. That may have a much higher response rate. We’re still learning, too, in terms of what are the different types of ways you can present information. The pharma companies cannot ignore the fact that doctors want, and have, alternative channels to get their information.
Q: Some argue that online technology will overtake all other ways of getting information to the physician?
A: I disagree with that, in that, it (technology) is not the primary source, and we would never expect it to be the only source of information. You can do a lot of things through the online channel using today’s technology but it is still a dedicated portion of a physician’s time. It is important to understand the perspective of technology vendors or technology companies. They put on their glasses and they think, “Wow, all doctors are online. They are doing all these great things. In the near future, doctors are going to get all their information from the Internet.” I disagree. Colleagues are incredibly important for physicians as are conferences in the off-line world. There are all these other sources of information that do not simply go by the wayside.
Q: Are physicians seeing the Internet as an important tool?
A: Yes, and they use it for certain situations. Realistically, the importance of the Internet is increasing over time. Is it going to be the only source of information for physicians within the next three years? No.
Q: What’s driving physicians to go online?
A: There is a broad category of physicians who are just seeking information, and there is a kind of migration or balance of the online and offline worlds. Journals are incredibly important sources of information for doctors, from primary care physicians to very specialized oncologists. The physicians learn from these offline peer-reviewed journals. They’ve been around for ages and now an increasing number are becoming available in an online capacity. There is a big segment of physicians who get the print journal in the mail. It sits on the shelf. Today, they may be more likely to go online and read the journal than they are to read the offline equivalent. Another example is drug information. Physicians do not necessarily need off-line printed material to get drug information in a timely manner. Increasingly, physicians are going to the Internet or may use a PDA to pull up that drug information.
Q: In some of your research, you note that the gap between doctors invited and those participating in eDetailing seems to be increasing. Would offering an incentive be a way to mitigate this?
A: Providing something of value to a physician, yes, in many cases, can help the response rates. But, if you have to provide significant forms of compensation to get your physicians to participate, you may want to step back for a second and question the value of the content you are providing.
Q: Any predictions for online use by pharma companies covering the next two years?
A: Certainly on the physician side, again, you see companies saying, “How do we right size our sales force.” We’ve (Manhattan Research) actually looked at this in research. There may be pockets of physicians who want to have a strictly online relationship with a pharmaceutical company in terms of customer service and everything else. That’s not happening today. A question may be, do pharmaceutical companies actually service that part of the market? Will the companies let a doctor have a relationship with the company -- order samples, order journal reprints, order promotional material, do informational requests, do everything -- without ever dealing with a real person in the company? That’s radical change.
Q: Is that good or bad?
A: Well, it’s going to happen. The question is, if you don’t do it and your competitors do, you’re at a disadvantage. The physician may not want to see a sales rep because the doctor may not see the value that the sales rep brings. What’s that ultimately going to mean to the traditional ways of doing business? Is technology ultimately going to complement, replace or be something in between?
