Veeva Systems thinks it has found the key to driving new patient starts: digital content. The conclusion comes from an analysis of 18 months of sales rep-physician meetings for 50 brands, which linked the use of digital content to a 2.5 times uptick in new patient starts.
As a provider of a biopharma customer relationship management platform, Veeva has access to data on more than 600 million healthcare professional interactions and activities. The software provider has used that repository to understand what works, and doesn’t work, for pharma sales reps tasked with driving new patient starts. The conclusion of the latest analysis is clear. Digital content is king.
“When digital content is used in a meeting with a physician, whether that's in-person or a video meeting, they retain the information better so they can understand how they apply that information when they see the next right patient,” Dan Rizzo, vice president of Veeva business consulting, said.
Across in-person and video meetings, the use of digital content correlates to a 2.5 times increase in new patient starts. Yet, digital content is used relatively rarely, featuring in 39% of meetings. The figure masks a wide range, with the top three global organizations in Veeva’s analysis using digital content 70% of the time and the bottom three deploying it in 18% of meetings.
Many reps have access to digital content. Veeva tracked a 20% increase in content creation last year, but 77% of the materials are rarely or never used. The pipeline is clogged somewhere between the creation and use of digital content.
“In HCP to rep meetings, less than four content pieces are used in a discussion, so having hundreds of different content assets to select is problematic for the rep,” Rizzo said. “What great organizations are doing right now is really focusing on the content quality, thinking about the 10, 20, 30 different content pieces that have the highest impact in physician discussions.”
Those leading companies are measuring the impact of their content and telling their field forces about the findings and what they mean for meetings with healthcare professionals. Taking that approach offers two shots at improved financial performance, with the potential boost to new patient starts supported by a reduction in the production of redundant content.
“What great organizations are doing is creating less high impact content, taking those savings they get by creating less and less and focusing it on the change management efforts, focusing in on the behavioral change and focusing on bringing in a strong approach to content effectiveness and measurement, so that they avoid reverting back to the creation of hundreds and hundreds of content pieces,” Rizzo said.