Digital Media in Healthcare from EPG Health Media

We've moved our blog - Social Media in Healthcare

2010-04-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

www.epghealthmedia.com/blog

To find out more about the changing social media landscape in healthcare and download a free copy of our recently published market research report - sampling the opinions of the Pharma industry, Doctors and Patients - Please visit our new blog at www.epghealthmedia.com/blog

Look forward to seeing you there!

Digital Media in Asia - making sense of reach and web access in China

2010-01-29T05:05:00.000-08:00

Whenever you hear someone from Pharma talk about healthcare in China, you're sure to hear the phrase 'emerging market'. Within the industry there has been a Klondike style gold rush running for several years.

Without question, in established markets such as EU big five and North America - as product pipelines constrict and marketing authorisation expiry appears on the horizon for some of the traditional cash cows - the wagon train heading east has gathered pace.

The commercial reality is that these particular prospectors have needed more than a gold pan and luck. Heavy investment in manufacturing and sales infrastructure, running into hundreds or thousands of millions of Euros has been the pre-requisite.

But to capitalise on that investment, huge communication and cultural challenges must be overcome.

Many key industry players are already a long way down the road and will doubtless benefit from being amongst the first to piece together this particular Chinese puzzle. But as the web access explosion continues unabated in China - thanks to the influence of digital media - might those who sat back and waited whilst others invested, now be able to compete without the massive investment required say, 10 years ago?

Using digital as part of the mix to educate doctors, market a treatment approach or secure advocates for a brand without having to set foot through the doctor’s door is only possibly if the physician has viable web access.

As a proportion of the population, web access is still relatively low in China, but we're looking at very big numbers, so a small proportion is actually a huge audience. As at June 2009 CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) established there were circa 338 million web users in China, at the time 25.5% of the population - or roughly equivalent to two thirds the entire population of the EU.

Between 2008 and 2009 alone, the figure for China had grown by 40 million people.

The rural population is very different from the cities. But if one considers the 10 Chinese cities with a population of more than 10 million people (so a smaller population 'sample' group, but still in excess of 100 million people), many of them white collar workers including doctors, then web access leaps to 67.7%. If we focus in on doctors, we're seeing close to 100% access.

During 2010 EPG Health Media will launch 'EPG Asia' a local language version of the established medicines and disease knowledge base at www.epgonline.org . This will allow doctors in China to access medicines and drug data, treatment and disease knowledge, educational tools and guidelines in their own language. If you'd like to find out more about our plans and how you can benefit contact us .

Do Patients Trust Digital?

2010-01-29T04:00:00.000-08:00

In our last blog we talked about which information channels (including non digital) have most influence over physician behaviour and why. As promised we've followed the study that drove that piece with a similar activity targeting patients visiting EPG Health Media's patient portal www.epgpatientdirect.org

To obtain a free copy of the survey results contact us here

The differentiator between this study and the plethora of previous consumer surveys being that we asked consumers not only where they go for health information, but what sources they trust.

The data from the study points to 70% of respondents rating what they find on the web somewhere between 'some trust ' and 'good trust', versus 45% that would say the same about a healthcare professional's advice, that's a pretty shocking comparison, with roughly the same proportion (69%) stating they would look to the internet first and 'automatically' to source information about a treatment they were prescribed, recommended or offered. That's good news for EPG Patient Direct.

Being specialists in healthcare digital communications , we don't have ready access to data relating to secondhand car dealers, but we might guess a similar comparison of behaviour when choosing a car, i.e. more trust in information about car choices found on the internet than let's say similar information given by a car dealer, so the physician might rank about the same as the dealer - at least with this sample group.

Download a free copy of the mini study data here.

It's often quoted (mostly by the financial service industry) that the biggest decisions we take in life relate to moving home (a mortgage), buying a car (a loan) and marriage (both), perhaps our next mini study should centre around comparing how these decisions are taken versus healthcare choices, if you'd like to suggest a topic for a mini consumer or physician survey, contact us .

Digital influence?

2009-11-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

In our last blog we talked about how EPG Health Media - as a digital publisher and communications business - had received a timely reminder [link to earlie r blog] on the type of content healthcare professionals seek in the digital environment, in particular we learnt not just what they look for online, but what they engage with.

That’s all fascinating stuff if you’re a digital convert (as most of us are), but from a marketeers point of view - What’s the end game here?

Surely it’s about influencing behaviour, so understanding your market and customer has to be not just about what type of content will engage, or through which digital channels you should deliver it, but also how that ‘understanding’ can be levered to influence behaviour and opinion.

Want a free copy of this market research - Use this form to submit a request.

What actually influences behaviour? It’s an entirely different question isn’t it? Have a look at the images below, results from a study we carried out three weeks ago on this very topic (by the way you can get a full copy for free here – just select the appropriate option and submit a request).

For clarity, the respondents are EU based physician subscribers to www.epg online.org - the medicines and disease knowledge base for healthcare professionals published by EPG Health Media. The panel was chosen to provide a representative cross section of doctors including general medicine and a proportional mix of medical specialties.

A: Physician information access channels/frequency

B: Influence

Want a free copy of this market research - Use this form to submit a request.

In slide A some of the results aren’t so shocking, you can clearly see the established shift from print to digital, perhaps a surprisingly high level of mobile engagement (this is EU based) - actually we weren’t so surprised about the level of mobile access, something you can find out more about here [earlier blog on mobile device habits and healthcare] - No huge shock at the frequency of direct engagement with the Pharmaceutical industry either.

But in slide B we turn to the big question, which channel is likely to influence behaviour?

It’s here where things start to get interesting. It’s clear that the channels where some form of interpersonal connection exists (such as colleagues, a congress and even the Pharma sales reps) fair much better in terms of influence, and frankly that’s understandable.

But for those of us plying a trade in the digital communications industry, the ‘enigma question’ must be why the shift to digital, illustrated in slide A, doesn’t translate to influence in slide B; how can that be?

Both print and digital publishing are still 2 dimensional communication channels, and despite the social networking explosion and it’s undeniable impact on web based communications, neither channel can truly be described as incorporating any form of ‘real’ interpersonal engagement, so arguably it remains fair to compare ‘like with like’.

So what’s the difference when it comes to healthcare communications? Why in general terms should print beat the web hands down in terms of influence when its reach is evidently so diminished?

What does the web lack? Could it be proper referencing for medical texts, credibility, objectivity, fair balance, transparency or all of those and more?

If you’d like to understand more about HCP behaviour, which channels they engage with and how they are influenced you can contact us via www.epghealthmedia.com or simply check back here from time to time.

We will conduct a further study towards the end of November asking physicians ‘what’s wrong and what’s right with web content’, in particular we’ll focus in on the issue of influence. Maybe you have a question you’d like us to incorporate in the study, feel free to let us know!

Shock - Doctors want diagnostic and online disease management tools

2009-09-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

EPG Health Media operate 24 disease knowledge centres at www.epgonline.org with another 10 in development at any single point in time, so it’s easy to see one of the most vexing questions for our medical communications and content development team - the Pharma customer too - is what to include in a new disease knowledge centre, how can we make the next one a little different, bring something fresh to the topic and further engage our HCP audience…

There's no question a new treatment or approach adds focus to any healthcare communication story, but our doctor research reminds us of the kind of back to basics lessons that will resonate with those who run training courses in almost any sales environment.

Listen to your customer (in this case the customer is the doctor) and if you get the fundamentals right both the digital communications project and the all important sale will have legs.

A recent study of physician digital preferences by EPG Survey should remind us about the importance of the basics.

A sample of the 322,000+ EPG Online subscribers were asked how they viewed a newly launched knowledge centre - in terms of value, quality, structure etc.

92% rated it somewhere between "above average" or "excellent" and "would recommend to a friend". That's great news for the development team, a sure sign they've come close to the mark in terms of overall content. But when the same doctors were asked how they thought we could further improve the content, 70% of respondents asked for additional diagnostic aids, patient resources and online disease management tools.

Okay, so you're thinking….hang on a second, aren't these the boring bits, we want to ring the bells about our brand?

Driving initial engagement through a useful story - for example a new treatment approach, or even a mature treatment with a different approach – provides a powerful call to action and will get market attention. Going on to place that “story” in an appropriate digital channel provides the opportunity to contact, but most would agree levering initial engagement and contact to a full blown relationship with the customer is key to long term success.

Part of what buys the long term relationship - web stickiness - is the ability to serve up good quality resources to support the brand story, resources that many marketeers have an abundance of in their digital archive - but rarely consider using in new web projects.

Some of EPG's most successful digital health projects have been about making the doctor aware of existing good quality diagnostic tools and resources, tools that are actually highly reliable and represent an excellent investment of their time.

So the "back to basics" lesson must surely be - consider what your audience wants, not what you think they want after one of those rigorous blue sky thinking sessions. If you are in any doubt, why not ask them?

Mobile device users more loyal than traditional web users, not where they were expected to be? (irony intended)

2009-09-04T00:41:00.000-07:00

3 months ago we launched EPG Mobile (Beta), a browser detecting mobile device 'friendly' version of the disease and medicines knowledge base EPG Online

EPG Mobile has 20,000+ regular users in 3 months, 132% growth between July and August alone, all stats for a non-promoted, non-publicised test version of a service developed for a niche market that most web masters would give their right arm for. Yes of course we did link to it here and there (after all we wanted it tested), but basically we just 'turned it on' one day in May.

It's early days into what will be a 9 to 12 month beta test period with new elements and improvements already planned for later in 2009 and early 2010, but we are already learning new things about mobile device user behaviour.

First they are more loyal, they come back more frequently and more often. Okay they don't stay quite as long as a typical web user at EPG Online or view as many pages, so no surprises there then, but the loyalty perhaps is. Why so?

The explosion of iPhone usage and development of appropriate medical related Apps suggests there is plenty out there for the doctor on call or the med student at study, much of it - but not all - is good and some of it even free! Let's face it, even we are developing an App of our own (free to use of course). Maybe the devices themselves hold the answer. Despite the unquestioned success of the iPhone and despite the picture used above, in our first 3 months Windows based OS users out number iPhone users 7 to 1.

Early results from the Beta test also show us something else, not just about how this group of digital savvy, gizmo loving, head downer docs behave, but where they come from. Our results indicate the age of the mobile web service may have become reality in healthcare - but with a geographical region leading the growth curve we did not expect (outside the USA where it happened a while ago).

The usual suspects are at the top of the list, Germany in first place - interestingly for a currently English language only service - then the United States, UK, Sweden (they love their mobiles), Spain and so on. But the truly explosive growth and most loyal group of users are in the emerging markets China, India, South East Asia.

We know these are important markets, everybody does. But having spent the last 2 years working on localised versions of the web service for these very same users, in particular tackling some significant technical challenges with character set behaviour in the DB back end, maybe it's possible that while we were developing the (web) service, the emerging market(s) moved on.

Not quite back to the drawing board for us, as the web remains the number 1 channel for reaching the new markets and our technology affords delivery via multi-channels, but perhaps a sign of what's to come.

Response Source | Press Release | Cystic Fibrosis Knowledge Centre ...

2009-06-11T03:46:00.001-07:00

Response Source | Press Release | Cystic Fibrosis Knowledge Centre ...

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Doctors on Twitter?

2009-06-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

EPG is on twitter but what does twitter mean for healthcare, are we fashion victims?

"Research by Nielsen suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return"

Will the hype (see this BBC story based on a recent Harvard study) sustain some form of useful reality in healthcare, are there truly practical uses now or in the future?

When the Children's Medical Center in Dallas made internet history recently with a father giving a kidney to his 3-year-old son, while "tweets" were sent during the procedure, there did seem to be some clarity of purpose in the application.

Yet further paractical purpose is seemingly lent to the service by this CNN story "It's 7 a.m. at Henry Ford Hospital, and surgeons are preparing to remove a
cancerous tumor from a man's kidney."

So there are clearly some physician users, but in a recent micro survey when we asked a group of EU physicians about their social networking preferences, 87% of respondents were active users of social networking, with some 18% having registered on twitter.

If you want to know more about past and future market research on healthcare and social networking, submit a request here and be sure to select 'market intelligence' from the menu.

Thrombosis

2009-06-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

To improve patient care and to increase awareness of thrombosis we have launched a new partnership with ThrombosisAdviser.com

The website provides up-to-date information for physicians and patients on thromboembolic diseases including daily news on thrombosis.

ThrombosisAdviser.com was developed in collaboration with recognised experts in the field of thrombosis.

Not just making a call - what more can doctors get from a mobile phone?

2009-05-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.epgonline.org/ launched www.epgonline.org/mobile in beta form a few weeks ago, it's a cut down version of the full disease and medicines knowledge base already available free online.

The idea is to give access via mobile phones to some of the online content such as drug/medicine information and clinical news. The test has gone well and we are looking at the type of content we should add in the future. We are even developing mobile apps for iPhone. Making a short form version of the EPG medicine and disease knowledge base along with medical news available on a phone seems, well, too easy. So what else is needed?

Here are some ideas - what would make a difference to you?

Scan a pack of medicine and instantly access full prescribing information anywhere at any time

Cross check meds

Find equivalent medicine

Signs & symptom checker