Novartis

In a world where technology and retail disrupt healthcare (for example, recent Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical and CVS Health’s acquisition of Signify Health), patients become more empowered to make decisions over their health, or in other words, they become healthcare consumers.

Consumers have control over what they buy, how they buy, how much they spend and how they feel when using a product. As a result, many retail and consumer packaged goods companies have moved from information economy into experience economy, providing consumers with real-time, on-demand, personalized marketing, product, and customer support. In stark contrast, pharma still sees patients as one cohort of drug users and mostly communicates with them via one-way generic TV commercials.

With technological disruption of healthcare and fierce competition, patients now see more drugs entering the market, better financial assistance, and more control over their treatment choice. The decision over which drug to take is also becoming more shared between a physician and a patient. 

The rising role of Behavioral Science in Pharma

In Pharma, we are used to thinking that treatment choice comes down to superior science and affordability, but in the shifted paradigm of consumer-first healthcare physicians and patients consider more factors while making a decision. And just like with any other choice, behavioral science drives motivation behind treatment, its duration and patient adherence to a medication.

“Behind every behavior is a feeling and behind every feeling is a need”, says Brendan Gallagher, Chief Connected Health Officer, Publicis Health. Qualitative market research, which pharma traditionally administers to find out patient’s needs and feelings, assumes that all patients are the same. The beauty of behavioral science is that it fundamentallyargues that consumers are individuals, with different behaviors, feelings and needs.

With better access to granular, high-qualitydata on consumers, we can employ behavioral science to learn how patients live, how they choose to spend their time, what their lifestyle is and what their beliefs are. We can then combine behavioral science with machine learning to create micro-segments of consumers that will reveal a set of unique archetypes.Integrated pharma marketing teams then have enough information to deliver personalized messaging to these patient micro-segments using digital technology that delivers a message at the right time, via the right channel. This approach allows us to engage a patient in a meaningful dialogue, addressingtheir personal feelings and needs.

Creating virtuous AI cycle out of personalized patient engagement

Using behavioral science and machine learning to personalize patient experience with pharma products comes with an unexpected but a pleasant side effect. By engaging patients in a two-way personalized dialogue and addressing their unique needs, we create a virtuous AI cycle. Personalized communication leads to more engagement (and produces more data), which contributes to smarter and more nuanced AI, which in turn makes communication even more personalized.

In a world where it takes a few clicks to buy groceries, pre-plan evening entertainment at home and even connect with your doctor for a telemedicine appointment, it is time to make pharmaceutical industry consumer-first. Behavioral science and machine learning provide us with data and tools necessary to make that leap.