Global Pharma’s healthcare digital activities span 88+ countries, with patient centricity being a strategic pillar in its journey to becoming the leader in health technology. The central digital leadership team is driving the creation and execution of consistent strategies and shared platforms for all digital activities for patients, doctors, and pharmacists.
The scope of the project involved finding answers to the question of how Global Pharma can publish/make available for patients the information on their prescription products in core markets, keeping in mind strict regulations and brand guidelines on digital for a regulated market like Pharma.
Using Harvard Business Review methodology, we generated different possibilities and hypotheses to find answers to the exam question and provide recommendations that are easy to implement as quick wins. We identified and analyzed 15+ local and global pharmaceutical competitors, peers, and ePharmacies digital activities in the target market, interviewed patients, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, medical reps, and other key individuals in the local markets, and researched 40+ media sources for past and recent news/articles/developments around pharma laws and regulations for the usage of digital media and content.
We faced challenges obtaining insights into grey areas of digital laws surrounding strictly regulated markets. Still, we were able to answer the exam question by recommending over 50+ different ways Global Pharma can provide relevant patient-centric information in core markets across web/social channels.
Our work also provided additional value beyond the original ask, including visibility on where and how Global Pharma compares to its competitors when it comes to product visibility on various mediums, a POEM framework recommendation on quick wins versus longer-term strategic changes required in Global Pharma’s local market, and new competitor findings such as ePharmacies and knowledge base aggregators eating into the share of Global Pharma’s brand voice.
The head of digital at Global Pharma was pleased with the report, noting that it was pretty extensive and went beyond their initial briefing. They now clearly understand that there is no legal prohibition for them to publish RX medicinal information for the general public (always with the recommendation of referring to a physician); some of their competitors and other 3rd party sites are providing information even beyond RX and most importantly, their products/brands are sometimes inexistent or lacking behind the competition considerably.
