Wednesday, September 28, 2011 06:16:50
Building Trust-Based Relationships – 2006
by Fine Healthcare
From previously focusing only on building relationships with prescribers, healthcare organisations are now turning their marketing attention to forging sustainable relationships with funders, patients and even Government. At funder level, this new trend often entails developing marketing tools specifically designed to meet their communication requirements. It’s an approach that involves the use of appropriate media to communicate targeted messages to funders. For instance, the results of pharmaco-economic studies or clinical trials are frequently printed and distributed to funders to assist them in formulating treatment protocols or making funding decisions.
Although the regulatory environment makes communicating directly with patients in a retail pharmacy environment extremely challenging, new and innovative ways are being leveraged that allow pharmaceutical manufacturers to reach this segment of the audience. The most successful of these appears to be the introduction of programmes that educate patients about diseases and/or facilitate disease management by encouraging compliance with treatment regimes. These programmes also enhance the prescribing doctor’s efforts and contribute to operating cost-efficiencies within the healthcare funder environment as patients who comply with treatment are less likely to regress or become resistant to the drug, which, in turn, results in cost-savings to the funder (a particularly important factor given the substantially higher price of ethical drugs).
An array of tools is already being used to communicate with patients, ranging from sponsored support workshops and educational literature, through SMS reminders to collect repeat scripts and branded pill-sorting containers, to easy-to-use calendars and diaries. In most cases, the benefits of these endeavours endear the patient to the brand via the creation of a sense of ‘personal concern’ that the product has for its patients.