Internet and acquisition of health related information
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We have already become accustomed, and take it for granted, that the Internet has started a new era of human communication, a new era of the acquisition of information. All fields of human activities, thus also the pharmaceutical industry and its clients – doctors and patients, must react to the new situation.
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Recently, we have conducted a research on the topic of e-mail communication among patients and physicians. There is some data that we have collected through our healthcare portal for general public.
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We asked potential patients questions related to the use of e-mail for their communication with physicians.
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Good communication between a physician and a patient significantly influences treatment results. However, the mutual expectations with which both parties enter the physician-patient relationship are not always fulfilled when moving further and it simply does not always go in the right direction.
Various researches show that majority of patients feel that their physician does not communicate with them the way they would like him to. Pharmaceutical companies keep on educating physicians about new drugs, new ways of treatment etc. and they are crying out for better patient compliance at the same time. Maybe educating physicians in the right way of communicating with patients could be the way forward.
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Good question, I think we really lack ROI studies on e-projects. Lots of great stuff is done, but I have the impression we almost never measure the effectiveness...
I am wondering, why so many questions and questionmarks arise around ROI of e-projects. E-projects usually take about 3% of the whole marketing budget in pharma. All the other 97 % are spent and ROI is very rarely measured and questioned in these. Why to bother so much about ROI of e. Should not we start using it and see real resulst and impact in our target audience behaviour?