Shaping the Understanding of Measurement at the Point of Care, An Expert Discussion
The 2016 PoC3 Summit will take place on October 4th at the Convene Conference Center in the Financial District of New York City. The event is an opportunity to discover how the changing climate of healthcare means a fundamental shift in how the industry participates in health-related communications. The second annual PoC3 Summit will help industry personnel to better understand how the patient/healthcare provider dialogue continues to become a more complex and crucial element.
In anticipation of the upcoming event, a variety of representatives from PoC3 member companies and speakers scheduled for the second annual summit were asked for their input regarding the following …
ROI ROUNDTABLE QUESTION:
“Measuring program performance at point of care can be complex and full of idiosyncrasies. In counseling a marketer at the planning stage of a point of care placement, what do you think is the single most imperative thing they understand about the unique measurability and data-driven targeting that’s possible within point of care? How do they best prepare to measure successfully?”
Christie Conn
Segment Leader Small Pharma and Non-Pharma
Commercial Services, RWES US
IMS Health
We have all heard the phrase “garbage in; garbage out”. Targeting and campaign performance work the same way. When considering targeting in the POC space, there are a few things to consider:
– Is placement in a digital wall board? Print media? Check-in kiosk?
– Will it be used in the waiting room, within the exam room, or back of the office?
– Will patients and caregivers, along with physicians see the campaign?
These factors impact physician specialty targeting and achieving your business objectives. Once targeting strategy is determined, consideration of measurement objectives is imperative. Research teams always prefer a hold out group, but marketers see this as a lost opportunity for revenue. The next best method is matching the test physicians to control physicians on a one-to-one basis accounting for historic writing activity, patient opportunity, specialty, managed care dynamics, and geography.
There is a paradigm shift occurring in the industry. Point of Care is becoming the natural replacement for suppressed detailing opportunity. Patients are educating themselves as their own advocates on treatment options. Understanding how the impact of cross-channel tactics work in synergy and being able to optimize those tactics in flight is the best way to effectively manage brand budget. So think with the end in mind:
Target smart. Measure often. Build success stories.
Natalie Hill
SVP, Insights and Analytics
AccentHealth
When planning a campaign at the point of care, marketers should work backwards from their end goal. The outcomes they seek – whether it be an increase in brand awareness, facilitation of a patient-doctor discussion or patient initiation on therapy – will be the direct result of their targeting strategy and messaging. Point of care affords pharma marketers a direct path to their desired audience (via behavioral and demographic targeting) and an opportunity for immersive messaging in key medical moments.
Marketers have a variety of metrics at their disposal to measure campaign impact. For a measurement plan to truly succeed, it is critical that marketers:
– Establish performance indicators up-front
– Communicate KPIs as early as possible in planning
– Align their metrics to their brand objectives
With clear KPIs and pulses in measurement to track performance over time, marketers will have the tools required to quantify the impact of their current campaign as well as the insights needed to maximize performance in the future.
Jeremy Mittler
VP, Analytics Services
Crossix
The theme of any message to a point of care marketer should start with the notion of aligning patient-centric messaging with patient-centric approaches to targeting and measurement, rather than disconnected HCP-focused approaches. This means identifying patients exposed to the message and linking to actual health data to determine incremental impact on those specific patients. Adding in clinical metrics of campaign success (such as lab tests and results), tied to audiences exposed to POC campaigns, further enhances learnings and insights.
Furthermore, a patient-centric approach to POC measurement enables brand marketers to conduct true cross-channel analysis, leveraging the patient as the common denominator among all consumer and HCP investments. Marketers can understand campaign impact when a person is exposed to messaging at the point of care and online, for example, as compared to another combination of channels.
Finally, marketers should deploy messaging to POC locations where the most valuable targets are, based on potential incremental impact, versus taking a blanket approach leveraging previous HCP or patient category experience.
Taking a patient-centric approach to both targeting and measurement closes traditional gaps and better aligns campaign goals, target patients, and metrics of success.
Bryan Morgan
Director, Marketing Analytics
ContextMedia:Health
POC marketing and educational programs have become increasingly critical components of Life Science and Health companies’ strategy. In addition to the rapidly growing scale that is available at POC, it is the substantial impact that these programs have which is truly driving utilization. In order to prove this impact internally and generate actionable insights, marketers are relying on POC’s unique ability to measure effectiveness. Point of Care tactics are highly measurable since the campaign is strategically placed at a known location and exposed HCPs and patients can be identified and have their behavior closely monitored. Whether it is changes in treatment regimens, adherence rates, or even lab orders, point of care measurement techniques can accurately connect exposed subjects to their subsequent behaviors.
When advising a marketer during the design phase it is recommend that they strategically select their targets to align to the campaign’s objectives by utilizing the robust data that is available. For example, if they want to increase new patient starts they can leverage baseline start rates by HCP in order to identify those most likely to accelerate their organic behavior. If they want to blunt switching to a competitive entrant then they can utilize switch rates at the HCP level to hone in on the most valuable providers. Whatever their objective is, there is usually data at the point of care level to help guide the targeting. Then, in order to analyze their efforts, marketers must ensure proper experimental design. It is preferable that they take advantage of the available POC scale in order to maximize statistical power. Then, they should leverage this scale to segment their population by target or tactic characteristics in order to power future campaign optimizations.
David Linestsky
VP, Finance and Analytics
Phreesia
The most powerful feature of modern POC measurement is the ability to build extremely strong matched control groups, particularly at the patient level. This capability allows marketers to truly isolate the impact of a single tactic and side-step the classic issues of attribution that they are accustomed to dealing with in other channels. Additionally, the ability to perform longitudinal analysis provides for precise measurement of time to impact, which obviates the need to make potentially problematic timing assumptions and yields a more complete picture of the full impact of a program.
Scott Nesbitt
Chief Analytics Officer
Patient Point
The ‘single’ imperative is to tailor measurement to point-of-care (POC) itself.
1) Understand the program’s capabilities and your objectives. Clarify what you want out of POC. If you are measuring visits to your web site rather than deeper conversations with the health professional, you may be measuring the wrong things.
2) Understand your audience. Most POC programs reach the entire location, not just ‘select’ HCPs.
3) Understand when to measure. With any new POC program, make sure you know when the promotions begin, it may vary across your network.
4) Understand how long to measure. Good POC should be a behavior modification approach to alter physician and patient viewpoints based on education. That change does not happen overnight and programs should run at least 6 months before being evaluated for success.
5) Use multiple data points. No single measure is perfect. Multiple data points on multiple program attributes will tell a stronger story.
6) Finally, share. Partners can’t provide the best product or data if they don’t know what is of value to the marketer. Allow your partners to understand what you want, how you measure internally, and how the data will be used.
