Seven ways to apply digital technology to market access

Because purchasing power continues to shift from clinicians to institutional decision makers – hospitals, committees, buying groups, regional and governmental agencies – companies that deliver the most convincing health economic arguments operate with huge commercial advantage.

Yet it is only very recently that market access functions have looked to use the power of technology to make their case. Now however, the use of digital communications in sales and marketing has opened eyes to what’s possible – encouraging forward-thinking market access departments to now adopt these technologies to better reach their specific audiences.

To see what digital communications can do for you, here are seven ideas to get you thinking.

Multichannel marketing Market access needs to understand what physicians are saying and how patients are living to communicate effectively with payers. Often this data exists but is siloed with marketing teams, so connect your data streams to ensure that it shared. Then enable market access to generate data themselves with digital communication tools that can be used with their audiences – again connecting this data stream to contribute to one coherent market picture.

The best performing market access teams see themselves as being more than just creators of value propositions. By taking a broader view and re-imagining themselves as active communicators, they become both more effective and more demanding – seeking new communication tools that enable them to deliver on this expanded role.

While the audiences are different, much of what has been learned by pharma marketing departments over the last few decades can be directly applied to market access by transferring digital technologies, knowledge, and processes. A good first step is to simply make market access people aware of what is now possible and enable them to make the connections to their specialty.

Because institutional decision makers are few in number and so important, personal one-to-one meetings will likely always be paramount. But technology can increase the frequency of contact. A good way is to establish a relationship one-to-one and then grow and maintain it through virtual channels that are introduced in a personal way – such as switching to remote calls for follow-ups.

Just because you are making health-economic arguments, it doesn’t have to be a dry presentation of spreadsheet data. The rules of good communication still apply, so always seek to turn the numbers into stories. As a rule of thumb, two-thirds of your communication should be storytelling. Digital technology can work wonders here by bringing these stories to life through graphics, video, and animations.

The opportunities for interaction that digital technologies offer can also make your arguments more relevant to each institution. A presentation, for example, could include embedded calculators that enable your audience to add information like the number of patients that they care for – and then see how your product will improve diagnosis or clinical outcomes in their specific institution.

Because things differ greatly at country, region and even individual institution level, communications need to be flexible. A good solution is a presentation that can run on a mobile device for face-to-face sessions and also be projected on screen in more formal settings. With the right content, it’s even possible for the presenter to match the presentation to the audience on-the-fly by ‘dialing up or down’ in the amount of clinical or health-economic content.

Digital sales technology can give commercial advantage in your payer discussions. To learn how, download this market access case study which gives you the overall thinking and process behind this groundbreaking project: https://agnitio.com/case-study-pharma-payer-communication/