K. Hariram reports on the OPPI 50th Annual General Meeting held in Mumbai on October 21. The report also features photos from the conference. Other topics covered include the role of emotions in pharma marketing, the importance in preparing much before-hand for the next level of your pharma career and the concept of the "tipping point" and its relevance for pharma marketing.
Indian Pharma companies will have to create hybrid employees, who can be designated as the Digital Task Force (DTF).
Just as STFs were created to create a better perception and improve engagement with specialist doctors, DTF can rebuild relationships with doctors on a new premise of helping them to gain digital advantage to better manage their practice and patients.
To me, patient centricity is as fascinating a concept as it is contradictory. It is fascinating because it puts power into the hands of the patient. And it is contradictory because pharma does not like giving away power over its messages or processes. Pharma has traditionally never enjoyed interaction and has depended on ‘pushing’ messages across rather than having ‘conversations’. It probably also explains why we make do with medical reps who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer and scarcely invest in sharpening them.
With the Second Wave hitting India, customers (patients and physicians) will continue to socially distance themselves in the foreseeable future. Pharma must use the field force for reach and relationship and digital for frequency and personalised content for better customer experience.
The pandemic has made doctors adopt Telehealth in a substantial way to shore up their revenues and this will continue to be one of their channels to engage patients. Telehealth along with EMR/EHR, digital therapeutics and wearables is enabling doctors to better care for their patients. There are many ways in which pharma can support the digital evolution of doctors.