The move towards value-based, personalized healthcare means that life science and pharma companies need to create conversations around evidence and efficiency, rather than traditional promotional materials.
Pharma can extend their value proposition by moving ‘beyond the pill’ and embracing an end-to-end (E2E) evidence tactic. This model involves providing evidence across the entire product life cycle.
Healthcare providers (HCPs) favour this model because it focuses on real world outcomes, providing them with trustworthy and authentic information. For more information on this visit our previous post and infographic explaining what HCPs want from pharma.
Traditionally, value propositions for pharma are old-fashioned marketing messages, claim-based communications, and little evidence. This goes against the desires of HCPs for empirical evidence and stronger CME (continuing medical education).
So, how can pharma sales and marketing teams respond to this gap?
Creating and managing evidence-based messages across both digital and traditional channels will allow pharmaceutical sales reps (PSRs) to communicate effectively with HCPs.
What is End-to-End Evidence?
Some life science organizations and pharma companies are adapting their value conversations with HCPs, payers, and other stakeholders to concentrate on evidence messages. Evidence is still needed in greater volume and variety.
E2E evidence is information that is supplied to HCPs that can be used to help them make a decision. This evidence is captured and maintained throughout the entire product life cycle - ranging from initial drug development, to clinical trials and approval, through to the post-marketing phase and consumer usage (Source: SupplyChainBrain, 2013).
The application of E2E transcends the silo of the traditional value chain; because it's focused on product efficacy, safety, and economic value.
An effective E2E strategy can help pharma companies become more competitive by being ‘first-to-market’, speeding-up product approvals and prescriptions, and contributing greater return on investment (Source: PharmaExec, 2016).
Ultimately the clinical success of a drug is still the top priority; but the market now requires information on the post-marketing effectiveness of a drug.
This includes, how well a drug works in actual use by patient populations, the quality of raw materials, the features of the manufacturing process, and patient’s behaviour (adherence levels).
As a result, organizations become more insight-driven, and pharma sales reps are provided with data based evidence that they can share with prospects.
Product Life Cycle Management
Pharmaceutical companies should gather evidence regarding, and look into managing, the following items.
- Quality of raw materials, input ingredients;
- Consistency and quality of manufacturing;
- Ensuring that physicians are prescribing optimal doses depending on patient needs;
- Patient adherence - if a patient is taking the drugs as prescribed, and abstaining from factors that would reduce its effectiveness; and
- Post-trial effectiveness and long-term patient outcomes.
(Source: SupplyChainBrain, 2013)
E2E evidence is cyclical. This means that evidence used to optimize product value can be filtered back to create new opportunities for discovery and development (Source: PharmaExec, 2016).
E2E Evidence Management Strategy
Implementing an E2E evidence management strategy means breaking down data silos to make any and all relevant information and content accessible to the entire sales force (Source: Deloitte, 2016).
An E2E approach provides pharma sales and marketing teams with an opportunity to manage and organize evidence based on the needs of the user. This allows them to maximize efficiency during a visit and to speed-up response time for digital interactions, such as email or co-browsing.
By utilizing pharma sales enablement for their digital sales content, PSRs can capture important HCP information such as interest and intentions towards the company’s products. They can track how HCPs interact and engage with the content. This behavioural data reveals actionable information for how best to tailor evidence-based discussions for each HCP in the future.
Furthermore, using a pharma sales enablement platform optimizes the ‘search and find’ process for content. PSRs can pre-plan a call with a sales playbook, the marketing team can create custom playbooks, and the system itself can recommend material for the specific account (HCP).
As for the content management, the following graph demonstrates how PSRs can segment the E2E evidence value chain.
(Source: Deloitte, 2016)
The Future
As the healthcare industry continues to shift towards evidence-based marketing, pharma manufacturers and sales reps must be able to provide HCPs with what they need.
To remain competitive and successful, pharma sales and marketing must focus on delivering messages about the economic and clinical value of their products across the entire product life cycle.
Conclusion
E2E evidence generation and management is a complex process, and PSRs can’t be expected to memorize the unique needs of each HCP and know which content piece contained which information at all times. If you’re at this stage of E2E planning, you’ll need a dedicated content management platform like pharma sales enablement.
If you want to transform your PSRs into trusted 'go-to' information surrogates for your entire HCP account list, request a demo below and let our sales specialists show you how pharma sales enablement can get you there.
