MEDICAL INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION

The Medical Information (MI) service is the response to unsolicited medical and scientific enquiries from healthcare professionals and patients. 

An "unsolicited enquiry" - also known as a medical enquiry - is a question spontaneously raised on a specific medical-scientific topic or product, whether on or off label.  

Medical information is, in particular, the core of pharmaceutical companies: a whole series of activities, internal and external, which govern the various company functions, such as the editorial staff, the medical representatives, the digital marketing section, the KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), MSL, and more, all flow from it. These activities in medical information are supported by, for example, bibliographic searches and the receipt of medical enquiries. The rest we will look at in detail later.  

Among the channels for receiving enquiries is the Focal Point.

The Focal Point is the point of collection of enquiries from healthcare professionals and/or patients, whether by phone, chat or email - by filling in a form with all the specifics of the enquiry on the website - and which must be passed on to the medical information team. 

These can be requests for literature searches to support the prescription of certain drugs in specific clinical cases (e.g. whether it is possible to prescribe anti-inflammatory drug X for a patient with cancer Y), product claims, selection of full text articles on a certain topic, and so on. 

Each request must be recorded and evaluated and, if not specific to the medical field, sent to the relevant department (e.g. Pharmacovigilance Department, Quality Department, etc.).

Registration is essential: it allows the traceability of the request, from receipt to processing. 

How to deliver the response? By following the preferences of the requester.

If you don't think the focal point can be useful, below you can see Merqurio's case history: the numbers should convince you that it is a good tool for passing on information.

Merqurio case history (annual averages)

• 5,500 Focal Point phone calls

• 4,350 medical information queries from MDs or patients/citizens

• 340 reporting of Pharmacovigilance Reports and Product Complaints

• 280 requests for scientific articles

• 250 literature searches

In addition to medical information, scientific support is provided by Medical Writers through the writing of scientific content, the types of which can vary widely (articles, slide kits, infographics, and so on).

But on what basis is content created? Let's start from the beginning. 

Do you want to discover more on multichannel pharma marketing in Italy? Go to the link here.

In medical communication the same arguments can be used:

THE RIGHT MESSAGE, WITH THE RIGHT CHANNEL, FOR THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

Depending on the target audience (patient, doctor, pharmaceutical sales rep...) very different channels, tools and languages will be used.

A quality content must be able to educate, explain, inform but at the same time - even more so if the target audience is patients - also entertain and amuse. Surveys and the collection of insights, especially through web monitoring, are essential to succeed in this objective, but we will see this later. 

So, the first question to ask is: who is our target audience?

A healthcare professional? Maybe specialised in that particular field? Or is it a patient? 

Depending on who the interlocutor is, the language will inevitably have to change: if we use technical and referenced scientific terminology, it will be difficult for us to make ourselves understood by a patient who has dealt with something else in life: clarity, simplicity, fluency, use of images - perhaps even cartoons or vignettes - and/or funny videos are the keys to gaining attention. Obviously, the message must be referenced also in that case: scientificity and correctness must be present in the communication to the patient, otherwise it will not go ahead.

But it is also necessary to assess what the most effective method of dissemination might be, especially on the basis of the target audience. The needs of our interlocutor must also be taken into account. What I would recommend is to always combine the two types of channels: digital and print. 

"The use of a mix of available channels must be managed, without neglecting innovative channels, but not traditional ones either: they must be used together."

If you create a brochure to distribute to doctors via a pharmaceutical representative, that's one thing; but if you add email targeting to an even wider range of doctors, the reach will be amplified considerably. 

At Merqurio, we have, for example, created a new learning method for young doctors: interactive clinical cases. Through this type of content, the participant finds himself handling a case, observing the symptoms, giving a diagnosis and a possible treatment. All this is accompanied by a final explanation of the various steps. 

The Patient Support Program consists of a set of activities whose primary objective is to help patients: it can be support in choosing the right centre of reference for a given pathology, or help in contacting a doctor, or act as an intermediary with pharmaceutical companies.

Today's patients are increasingly digital, but they can easily drown in the sea of information "at the click of a button"; with these support systems they can land in a safe harbour where they can find the answers they are looking for simply, quickly and accurately. 

The channels chosen can vary: it can be a digital campaign, local events or webinars, etc. 

At Merqurio with the Diabetic Foot Patient Advocacy we interviewed more than 100 patients by developing a questionnaire survey that really puts the patient's needs, rights, treatment compliance and so on first. This provided an excellent basis on which to create materials not only for the patient, but also for caregivers, doctors and associations. 

Medical Information insight is the study of data from web monitoring or focal points that allow us to understand the behaviour of doctors and patients towards a given product or pathology. 

As mentioned above, insights allow us to target the opinion of our targets. They are one of the most widely used tools in pharmaceutical marketing, particularly in advertising campaigns. It's a bit like getting inside the mind of the consumer, in a more or less explicit way, retrieving the information we need to improve our services. 

Even during a call to the focal point, it is possible to get insights into a product. For example: during an enquiry, the patient may say that he or she is particularly happy with the anti-asthmatic, that it is a great product but that the shape of the dispenser is really uncomfortable. With more or less knowledge, the patient has provided the necessary insights to the company: the drug itself works, maybe it is better to change the device. 

Only if we take the time to listen to the opinion of our targets will we be able to modify the content to make it truly tailored to them. Only then can pharmaceutical companies create quality products.

Do you need Medical Information support? Turn to us!