Predictive analytics in pharma can do just what the name promises—predict what healthcare consumers want and need in services and products.
But predictive analytics can also be used for pharma and healthcare marketing. InVentiv Health recently inked an exclusive health and pharma contract with software and data provider Concentric in a deal that inVentiv expects will cut marketing costs and speed time to market, as well as deliver more effective campaigns.
“Predictive modeling or data analytics tend to look from a script financial side in doing projections or looking at media ROI or other ROI around specific areas, cobbled together across multiple groups. What we’re saying is ‘That’s great, but can you give us some of that data so that we can look at not just segmentation and ROI around scripts, but also things like inertia versus active decision-making?’" Patrick Richard, inVentiv’s managing director of data science, said in an interview.
He explained that decision-making example in that inVentiv has discovered significant inertia in mature drug prescriptions where doctors are automatically reordering or prescribing a treatment. By digging into the segmentation data the company can now access through Concentric, inVentiv can determine things like what percentage of a typical mature drug audience might be open to active decision-making and how that could impact sales for a pharma company.
Another example of how inVentiv is using the predictive data capabilities for marketing is a current test case it’s running with Concentric. InVentiv’s public relations group recently began a pilot looking at the effectiveness of a branded campaign versus an unbranded one. Not only will the results likely be illuminating, Richard said, but pilots like these can save money for clients in running data instead of real-world testing.
“We’re still in the early stages, but we’re finding it’s giving us much more sophisticated, easy-to-digest plans right away; and we don’t just explore one plan, but we can look at four or five or, in some cases, 20 to 30 different scenarios that look at different channels, different spend levels and different types of impact to a segmentation,” he said.
Predictive modeling is part of a wave of the data and accountability demand that’s beginning to swell in pharma. As the pressure increases on pharma companies to justify marketing expenses, they are demanding more predictive models and data analytics from agencies before committing to those expenses.