For a long time now the relationship between patients and doctors has been analyzed and discussed, and the pandemic appears to have put it under the spotlight yet again, and for good reasons.
It seems reasonable —and quite unavoidable— that the post-pandemic world will see changes in this relationship. Technology and pharma are two actors that will definitely take a different role.
Uri Goren, Head of Digital Engagement and Capabilities at Teva Pharmaceuticals, shares with us his experiences and ideas, and provides an interesting analysis and opinion about the present and future of this complex relationship.
What changes do you think will prevail in a post-pandemic world, regarding the medical industry and its actors, in terms of marketing strategies? Has there been a permanent change, do you think, in doctors and patients, and their relationships?
It seems clear to me that the shift from offline to online, as we have seen it, is here to stay, at least in part. The post-pandemic world will definitely see a change in the mix, with online activities taking over some traditionally offline ones. This will permeate to one-to-one meetings, small meetings and even larger ones.
In terms of marketing, I think the main shift we will see is that value and content will become more and more the basis of the relationships between physicians and pharma, as online meetings are easier to avoid, and require more attention and time.
Moving to more online activities will ultimately create a lot more data on the interactions with our customers, which will allow for a lot more analysis and optimization. This, in turn, will open up other channels, and in some ways complicate the marketers work, since they will need to be more focused on strategy and content generation. Sales people will have to master the orchestration and value-adding game to make themselves valuable and meaningful in the relationship. This will probably mean new roles around data and analytics and content creation, followed by new technology and processes, which will create interesting strategic options that will transpire to market models.
The doctor-patient relationship will likely be affected accordingly; the key question will be “do we really need and offline meeting for this?” Although it will ultimately be the decision of the parties involved in each case in particular, there is an increasing feeling that many meetings do not really need to be offline. This process will be accompanied by more online and home-based tech that will generate more and more data to support a remote consult.
The last year has contributed tremendously to the understanding of both advantages and limitations to online medicine; this experience will empower entrepreneurs to find better solutions, as well as better clinical behaviors, and the ability to choose settings in a more data-based approach.
In your TED presentation you proposed that patients be treated as a resource, what do you mean?
Patients are the hardest working party in the healthcare system, as it is quite clear they have the most at stake.
The patient connects the different physicians and experts, is required to bring tests back and forth, does plenty of navigation and bureaucratic work, and a lot more. This long list of acts, events, efforts and time is usually neglected. However, when you acknowledge it and empower them, their contribution to better clinical outcomes is amazing. An abundance of research shows that the more the patient is engaged in their care, the better clinical outcomes they achieve.
In addition, patients have ample knowledge and expertise in “living with a disease”, which is crucial to many issues, and if we do not acknowledge it, we are missing out on so many opportunities.
Now that we have open-minded doctors, technology and engaged patients, what is left out or is missing?
The missing part is scale: how many of the physicians and system administrators are really open-minded, how much of the system is really technology-enabled, and how many of the patients are really empowered to engage in their own treatment? Unfortunately, substantially fewer and less that you would imagine. Just by looking at how many patients have real access to their full health record information, or how many of them can use that information based on their own needs, one can see that, although we talk about these issues recurrently, this is far from being the norm in healthcare. There is still so much work ahead of us, there is a lot of room for improvement.
What are the risks in this process? What would be your advice to better sort them? How can pharma help in this process?
The biggest risk we see, especially now, is misinformation, or —even worse— disinformation: we still need to build more trust in the system, and a better, more reliable system of checks and balances.
Diversity of information is great, but we need to ensure that this information is valid and explained in a productive way.
Vaccination, where we have the biggest issue, has been under this spotlight for years, and it is somewhat of a special case, but the learnings we have from getting people vaccinated should be applied to other areas of healthcare.
Pharma can play a significant role in transparency and trust, if it can generate a better perception and trust as an industry. Another key element pharma needs to embrace more effectively is patient participation, and opening up to real meaningful collaboration with its stakeholders across the value chain; this will promote transparency and better insights and innovation to fit their needs.
How do you envision the future of the patient-doctor relationship? What role will patients take in their treatments?
In the talks I give these days, I finish with a quote from Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an English writer and politician from the 19th century: “A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power”.
I think we are still in the reform phase of patient participation, but this will be a revolution: the partnership between patient and doctors —and through that the whole view of the healthcare system— will change and enable a deeper partnership.
Technology plays a key role in enabling it, as it democratizes data and knowledge and enables the transition of power to a place where patients can leverage it.
It is not a short, simple process, but certainly one of the main shifts we are seeing —and will continue to see— in healthcare.
BIO
Uri Goren, Head of Digital Engagement and Capabilities at Teva.
Uri Goren is a digital marketing and innovation professional within the healthcare industry with over 18 years’ experience. He currently works as Head of Digital Engagement and Capabilities as part of the Global Digital Commercial team at Teva. As a visiting lecturer at the Ben-Gurion University in the Master’s Degree in Pharmacy he is teaching Healthcare Technology and Innovation. He is also a Member of the National Advisory Board for Digital Health for the Israeli Ministry of Health.
He has worked in Teva as Associate Director in Digital Customer Engagement for the EU and International Markets and as the Digital Experience lead for Teva Israel. Prior to that Uri was the GM for e-Pochondriac, an agency that focused on providing innovative digital health and digital marketing solutions to the healthcare industry in Israel.
Uri holds a B.A in Communication and Management from the College of Management and an M.A in Philosophy and Digital Culture from the Tel Aviv University. He also writes a blog about Digital Technologies and Medicine, and is a keynote speaker in Digital Marketing and Health events across the world.