From breakthroughs in artificial intelligence to innovations in personalized messaging, a new digital age is now in full swing—and healthcare brands need to make sure they’re keeping up. Spurred by advances in technology, patients are taking a much more active role in their care. They’re seeking medical information across media channels, focusing more on preventive health and expanding their healthcare horizons beyond traditional settings to online portals, wearable devices and social media.
“Data and digital innovations are opening up new possibilities and experiences that we can deliver to truly help our customers,” says Pallavi Garg, Head of Global Oncology Products and Pipeline Strategy at Takeda, in the Phreesia report, Industry voices: Trends to watch in 2024. “It all comes down to embracing this new world and ensuring that our talent, strategies and skills are in balance with our approach to innovation,” she says.
But no matter how rapidly or dramatically the digital landscape shifts, patients will remain the “North Star” for healthcare communications, says Alison Tapia, Senior Director, Performance Marketing and Digital Innovation at Dermavant Sciences. Read on for more expert predictions on emerging and continuing trends to keep in mind in the year ahead, along with strategies to stay on top of them.
The patient journey’s evolution
In today’s fast-paced digital world, patients are taking medical research into their own hands, from posting their healthcare journeys on social media to scouring the internet for treatment options. And that hunger for health knowledge extends beyond publicly available information to their own medical data: Patients often check their test results on an online patient portal well before discussing them with their doctor.
“Patients are choosing to share more, learn more and to be their own advocate,” says Meredith Odell, Senior Marketing Director at AstraZeneca. “Brands need to consider that patients are going to have higher expectations and want to be active in their care.”
As they strive to meet those higher expectations, brands must understand the sheer volume of information available to patients and the numerous sources they can search to gather that information. With so many options, it’s critical to find out which channels key patients frequent, including niche and emerging platforms, as well as mass media.
“If your message isn’t there in the moment when the patient is looking for information, someone else’s will be,” Tapia warns.
This information boom, along with advancements in digital-health devices, will increase patients’ interest in health, wellness and disease prevention. And with patients’ minds on healthcare even outside of their doctor’s office, brands have many more opportunities along the health and wellness continuum to engage with their audiences in personalized ways, says Cassandra Sinclair, senior health and wellness advertising executive and board advisor.
“What’s happening in the messaging communications world is that science is now meeting personalized storytelling,” she says. There are now more digital preventive-health tools than ever before, creating more moments to engage with patients—and for longer periods of time.
“We have always thought about the patient journey, but usually with a narrow focus on a key moment,” explains Alexandra Beneville, Phreesia’s Vice President of Content Strategy. “Now, we as an industry will have to think as much about engaging with patients at early healthcare moments such as screenings, and supporting their genetic predisposition and risk-factor understanding, rather than just communicating diagnosis and treatment options.”
The health-equity opportunity for campaigns
Personalization also will continue to be a powerful tool for helping to close the health-equity gap. Many of this year’s campaigns will focus on empowering patients to manage their own care through messaging tailored to their unique medical and social needs, predicts Arielle Chavkin, Group Director of Digital Partnerships at Initiative,
“Brands should truly embrace and plan campaigns based on how the same disease can impact different communities,” Chavkin says. “When budgeting for campaigns and deciding where dollars should go, it’s vital to consider the intended audience’s socioeconomic status, race, religion, age, gender identity, sexuality, etc.”
Indeed, representing all types of patient groups in messaging is key to building inclusive patient experiences. Incorporating the experiences and feedback of diverse patient audiences into content development helps connect with patients on an emotional level, resulting in campaigns that accurately reflect the specific needs and challenges of each audience. When patients see themselves truthfully represented in campaigns, the disease education and resources those campaigns deliver are more likely to resonate with them.
Beyond empowering patients to manage their own care, campaigns also can help close care-access gaps by bolstering health literacy. Because patients’ understanding of healthcare and its terms, technology and treatments can vary widely, content should always be understandable, accessible and actionable for all patient audiences.
The right message at the right time
New messaging platforms are popping up faster today than ever before. From mass media to the point of care to social media and beyond, cultivating a thoughtful omnichannel strategy to reach a variety of patient audiences is essential.
“As pharma moves to embrace more of an omnichannel approach, the role that each channel plays is being looked at with much more scrutiny,” Tapia says. “Brands are asking more questions to understand whether their strategy is working. Some of these critical considerations include: Are we reaching the right people? Are we showing up with appropriate messaging for that channel? Is it impactful? And can we compliantly message in that channel?”
To be sure, new platforms represent exciting new opportunities to connect with patients, but Roz Silbershatz Tomás, who leads the Global Libtayo Core Brand Team at Regeneron, recommends a discerning approach. For example, it’s important to consider social media as an avenue to deliver the right message to the right audience, rather than just another way to get messaging across, she says.
With its short-video format, TikTok can be a prime outlet for reaching users during their leisure time with bite-sized health content that’s entertaining and informative. But it’s important to understand which types of messaging might work best with the platform and its audience, advises Juli LeDoux, Director, Marketing-Patient at ImmunoGen.
“On a platform like TikTok, elaborating on disease states relevant to younger audiences or disease states that might not be considered as highly emotional, such as neurology or dermatology, is key for reaching the largest audience,” she says.
The same goes for more established social-media channels. “LinkedIn is an amazing platform, but I see it much more as a promotional landscape to focus our healthcare-provider messaging,” Silbershatz Tomás says. “Facebook and Instagram I very much see as the patient landscape, or the place where you can reach patients appropriately with relevant messaging.”
In addition, as the audience and the channel change, so should the content and format of that messaging. For example, Silbershatz Tomás explains that she would never place the same message from a programmatic display banner at the point of care, since the latter channel provides a much greater opportunity for personalization and specificity.
“Point of care is a critical space to give the patient precise education on their disease state, knowing that they’re sitting in the doctor’s office potentially about to make a decision on their healthcare and treatment,” she says.
