In South Korea, smokers trying to quit with Pfizer’s new drug Champix can register for online support. Similarly, Japanese men are using pattern recognition software on mobile phones to discretely access a hair loss information site advertised in transit media. At the same time, an increasing number of doctors in Asia are ‘attending’ global discussions on prescription drugs, broadcast ‘live’ by healthcare marketers via microsites on the web.
While adoption rates vary by country, digital media is gaining traction with healthcare marketers in the region, spurred by the growing number of healthcare professionals and consumers seeking information online.
Not surprisingly, digital uptake is highest in wired communities like South Korea and Japan. John Cahill, regional director, Asia-Pacific, at McCann Healthcare Worldwide estimates that as many as 80 per cent of healthcare companies in these countries now have an online presence.
“At the end of two years, 50 per cent of our communications to healthcare professionals and consumers will be digital in these first-tier markets,” says Cahill. “In the second tier markets, where you’re looking at places like China, India and to a lesser extent Singapore, we see about 30 per cent to 50 per cent of our communications in the digital space.”
A crucial driver has been the increasing difficulty marketers are having reaching healthcare practitioners - their primary target - during the working day.
“Most of the industry aims their content at the doctor in the clinic, which is really the point where he has the least amount of time to really consider the information,” adds Cahill. “We know that for a large group of these healthcare professionals, a lot of their reading and active learning time, outside of seminars, is actually between 8pm and 11pm at night, and one of the more customised ways to reach them is via the web or through the mobile phone.”
Marketers have begun to employ e-detailing - physician portals, brand sites, search marketing and mobile alerts - the technological equivalent of traditional sales aids, to reach this elusive target.
“We’re also seeing the emergence of doctor social networks such as… Virtual Medical Centre in Australia and in China, a doctor community with over 600,000 HCP subscribers,” says Joanne Basford, practice director for Ogilvy Health in Asia-Pacific.
“These channels are allowing doctors to create their own content, and while blatant sales messages are not allowed, they do allow marketers to communicate in a responsible way, with messages about such things as clinical studies, updated product information and adverse reactions, for example. There is ample evidence to suggest that these messages have a positive upward impact on sales as doctors share and discuss the information posted by commercial interests.”
Marketers are also putting out non-branded information sites, accessible both to healthcare professionals and to the groundswell of consumers sharing information online.
A recent study by Edelman found that healthcare is ‘one of the most, if not the most, discussed area online’. In China alone, the study tracked almost 1.4 million health posts by over 170,000 unique posters - physicians, patients and general consumers - in a span of just three months.
In a category where direct to consumer communications is forbidden, information sites are among the few ways that marketers can influence these conversations, industry members say.
Meanwhile, in Japan marketers successfully raised awareness and acceptance of oral contraceptives by sponsoring an information site run by an advisory board of doctors, growing their market in the process.
“The problem was that doctors were not receptive to women being put on oral contraceptives, and the women didn’t want to talk to them about it,” says David Stark, president and CEO of DAS Asia-Pacific Healthcare, an Omnicom group company which runs the website.“We targeted doctors and women with this website, and put out a lot of information and a Q&A on it.”
Another interesting development, he says, has been eCompliance programmes, where registered patients are reminded via the internet or mobile media to get prescriptions filled or take medications, for example.
“If you look from the marketing point-of-view, there’s a 50 per cent drop off for patients taking hypertension medication - so if you get a patient not to drop off, that means sales for many years,” says Stark.
Like Cahill, Stark is optimistic about the growing use of digital media by the healthcare industry. “The division supporting digital at (Ominicom’s) healthcare agencies now generates 20 per cent of revenue, from zero in 2000, and is growing every year. Japan is by far the largest market in Asia, but India and China, with their large populations and smaller budgets may move very quickly into these programmes.”
One of the main challenges for healthcare marketers online is one of engagement, says Bosco Lo, director at Edelman Hong Kong.
“There is a massive amount of conversation happening online about the company, its products and the market it participates. Companies should be proactively understanding and participating in the conversation.”
However, many global healthcare companies remain on the first stage of Edelman’s five-stage engagement framework, focusing on product information sites and general online advertising, or “a general non-tailored, one-way online presence”.
Some have progressed to the next stage - one-to-one communications - while the third stage, conversation monitoring, is the furthest that companies have been engaged in, says Lo. From here, they need to join communities via blog participation, online community engagement and advocacy programmes, and finally co-create the community, where feedback is integrated into the company’s strategies.
Beyond that, pharmaceutical companies need to go one step further and be more serious about putting the services they have online on mobile platforms as well, says Grey CEO Subba Raju.
“When I talk to clients, the first thing they mention is a website or microsite. Not many have used the mobile medium, but with MMS and the kinds of capabilities that this medium has, there are a lot of things healthcare communicators can do,” says Raju.
