RP Blog
Social Media and Digital Technologies
What do they mean for Healthcare Market Research?
by Julie Denny, Marketing Director
I must admit to being a bit of a laggard when it comes to technology. Unlike my brother, who bought the new iPhone 4S as soon as it hit the shops, I have only recently got my hands on the 3G and I am delighted with it thanks very much. Before I had my “smartphone” I couldn’t see the point of one. Now my husband has lost me to a small device that allows me to play Words with Friends, watch cat videos on youtube, update my Facebook status and follow my favourite celebrities on Twitter.
So with the abundance of emails that hit my inbox everyday claiming that digital technologies are changing the face of healthcare, I feel that from a professional point of view, it’s time I got on board. And I must admit, I’ve grown rather excited by the opportunities new media, web 2.0 and digital technologies present to both the pharma industry and market research.
I recently attended an interesting lunchtime presentation given by fellow Director John Branston, who was sharing take-homes from a BHBIA course he attended on social media in healthcare. The course addressed the phenomenal rise in social media activity and asked, what are market researchers doing about it? EphMRA believes healthcare is already behind the curve compared to consumer industries when it comes to embracing social media.* But, John argues, there may be good reasons for this – the healthcare environment is much more complex, operating as it does in a strict regulatory environment with many stakeholders. Also, whilst the power of the patient is increasing, HCPs and payors remain the decision-makers of brand selection. However, I would argue that HCPs are people too, and therefore also influenced by the many messages presented to them in the online space. Is social media monitoring something that pharma MR should be paying more attention to? Well yes and no, believes John. There are useful monitoring tools that search for phrases as they appear across social media and the web, which also capture contributors’ details (where available) and these can be analysed to produce interesting results. However, whilst interesting, John believes the results lack the rigour normally applied to a market research project and offer limited scope for use in strategic market research. However, he thinks social media monitoring can be useful for landscape scanning and for monitoring tactical marketing campaigns or PR. He believes that more opportunities lie in the use of market research online communities, which give researchers access to panels of HCPs and patients who can participate in discussion boards, blogs and polls about different healthcare issues.
And this is the thing about the use of digital in market research that gets me excited – I think it opens up opportunities for market researchers to be even more creative in their research design and delivery. Internet research is now standard practice and gives us access to the global healthcare community. Web functionality offers us the ability to create more interesting, complex and powerful questionnaires, as well as speed and accuracy of online reporting. And it’s not just a quantitative tool. Online research using web 2.0 technology can be used to conduct quali-depth interviews and deliver insightful qualitative outputs such as video diaries and blogs.
Now we are being offered new opportunities to “survey-on-the-go” – using mobile “apps” to curry opinion from respondents. This enables researchers to conduct surveys at the moment of the experience, rather than sometime later when they need to rely on their memory. My colleague in quant is very excited by “gameification” techniques – using Flash and other software programmes to turn standard questionnaires into appealing games and consequently increasing respondent engagement and reducing fatigue. I can’t wait to see it being used in a healthcare setting.
What is also exciting is how digital technologies are being adopted by marketers in the pharma industry and how we as market researchers can help shape their online and mobile communications strategies. Our Asian office recently held a really fascinating seminar on the use of digital technologies, partnering with marketing communications experts McCann Worldwide. We were shown how pharma is increasingly using mobile app technology to engage with both patients and doctors. Patients are being offered tools to help increase compliance, such as alerts for taking medicines, diet and exercise advice or games for educating them about their condition. Doctors are provided with sophisticated diagnostic tools to help them select an appropriate treatment programme. Market research can help improve the delivery of both these types of applications, in the case of compliance, by helping deliver market understanding of the drivers of compliance and in the case of physicians by helping develop a better understanding of their needs, behaviours and treatment choices.
Exciting times no doubt. Are you up for the challenge? I think I am. Now, where’s my iPhone?
Request a copy of the slides on Social Media from John Branston's presentation
