Garth Sundem   00:01

Welcome to this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”. I’m your host, Garth Sundem, Communications Director at MAPS. And today we’re talking about insights to influence omni channel with experts from Pfizer and OPEN Health. This interview represents the views of the participants and not their companies. Joining us are Nishal Patel, Medical Channel Optimization Lead at Pfizer, Robyn Davies, Account Director at OPEN Health and Elin Siddall, SVP Medical Communications at OPEN Health. This episode is sponsored by OPEN Health. So we’ve at MAPS, we’ve talked about insights we’ve written about insights. But I am fairly confident that we have not talked or written about insights, specifically in the context of informing omni channel tactics and strategy. And so, Elin, I was wondering if you could get us started by talking about what even do we mean about insights in the context, context specifically, of omni channel?

Elin Siddall   01:08

Yeah, thanks, Garth. And thanks very much for inviting us to be part of this. I think, first of all, just to begin with, the process of gathering insights and utilizing them is by no means a new concept, we have long gone, all of us on this podcast have been using them to inform our strategic thinking and driving robust medical plans. But we have seen this change in our landscape recently and our thinking, this evolution in our thinking, how we approach communicating with our audiences. And it’s bringing omni channel to fore, and it’s really putting the audience front and center in terms of our thinking and our planning. And now when we’re thinking about medical plans, we should really be integrating some of these omni channel principles. And what does that mean? Well, I think, you know, you will have your Med strats, and objectives. And you now need to weave in your audience needs and interests to align with that. So that’s basically how we think about omni channel. And it allows us to step away from this one size fits all approach to allow a bit more personalization. And in the arena of metaphors that kind of allows for personalization, with terms of, you know, providing meaningful and relevant educational journeys. And therefore, our thinking in terms of how we gather and use insights has had to evolve to, because we now really need to think about our audience needs in terms of how we weave this into our plans. And I think so, in terms of just looking at, you know, current beliefs and educational levels is one thing, but then we start to think about in terms of what is their channel preferences, what are their preferred ways of education, you know, their educational preferences, and such, and these are things that then really start to make us evolve our thinking in terms of omni channel.

Garth Sundem   02:54

Okay, such Well, so is it true then, if omni channel puts the audience first, our insights, the mechanism by which we learn to put the audience first, Robyn, Nishal, what do you think about that?

Robyn Davies   03:11

Absolutely. I think insights are the way that we’re able to bring in, listen to our audience, understand what their needs are. So I think insights are fundamental to really building more personalized content.

Nishal Patel   03:28

I totally agree. I echo your thoughts, Robyn. Also, I think insights also show us how our HCP share information with their peers, we also understand how they communicate with their peers, how they educate their peers, as well. So I think that’s also an important point to note that insights are not only there for us to kind of understand their preferences, but also for us to understand how are HCPs communicating with each other.

Garth Sundem   03:57

Oh, that’s interesting. I’m sorry. Here’s an uninformed question. On my part. I was thinking about omni channel strategy is how Medical Affairs communicates with, you know, HCPs, and others, of course, other audiences is how HCPs communicate with each other part of our omni channel plan? I don’t want to take us into the weeds, but I got to know is that…

Nishal Patel   04:23

Yeah, I can take that one if that’s okay. So to me, when I think about omni channel strategy, it’s, you know, it’s us kind of educating our HCPs based on their preferences and their need, but also understanding how our HCPs utilize different platforms, how they educate their own peers, and we need to understand that so that we’re able to choose the right sort of platforms to put information out as well.

Garth Sundem   04:50

Oh, so omni channel is not just communicating between Medical Affairs and HCPs but looking at how it Information and messages that come from Medical Affairs might disseminate through the entire ecosystem. Okay, let’s go back to insights. Sorry about that. That was an aside. Okay. So what is it look like? We’ve we’ve talked about insights process and insights management before. At MAPS, I mentioned that. But what is the gold standard for insights? What generation and analysis in the terms of omni channel? Nishal, what do you think? Right?

Nishal Patel   05:33

Thanks, Garth. So I think with the insights, you need to really have a balance of quantitative and qualitative insights. You know, with quantitative insight gathering, there’s different approaches that you can take, you’ve got things like surveys, which really allow that robust statistical analysis as you can obtain a large sample size. But then you’ve got quite a qualitative approaches, which, which include things like interviews that really provide nuances and details that are often difficult to identify with the quantitative approaches. So I think you need a good balance of both qualitative and quantitative insights, to really inform your Omni channel strategy going forward. I also think that you need an accurate representation of your audience in terms of sample size, especially when you’re doing insight gathering. And you need to make sure that you’re not biased, right, you need to have a very balanced approach, especially when you think about preferences of your audiences, what are their needs, you need to weigh up in terms of both quantitative and qualitative insights. Historically, you know, we’ve been getting a lot of quant quant sorry, qualitative insights from our field force, which are great insights. Right, but you need to have a good balance with quantitative as well, to really make sure your Omni channel strategy is as robust as possible.

Garth Sundem   07:01

Could I get an example of a quantitative insight that would influence omni channel?

Nishal Patel   07:08

Sure. So from a quantitative perspective, you know, you’ve got things like, surveys, so let’s say you did an omni channel tactic. Right? You could have a Polling survey at the end of it. Right? And you could see it, did you shift the educational need there? And that’s a number versus a qualitative insight, which is, you know, how did the HCP feel about this piece of information? Did they provide you with any feedback?

Garth Sundem   07:38

Now is, I’m wondering if, if if metrics across omni channel channels would be a quantitative insight? Yeah, I’m thinking, Oh, X number of people engage with our information via via podcasts and X number of people engage with our information via, I don’t know, interactive web portal experiences? Are our metrics, in this case, the same thing as insights or is there somehow a difference between those two.

Robyn Davies   08:10

What a great question I think, has been a touch on as well, you know, looking at your kind of the performance of content you’ve put out there your publication metrics, they usually view obvious clues or insights into content preferences from your audience, you know, was the channel that you disseminated the data on reaching your intended audience, those things are also really important and can be fed back into your Omni channel plans as well, and kind of give you a measure of whether you need to change something, you could be more engaging to your audience using another channel, another format, for example?

Elin Siddall   08:48

Yeah, I think Garth, you also mentioned a critical phrase before where you said, Give me an example of an an insight which will inform your Omni channel thinking or omni channel plans. And I think the key word is influence there. So because when we when we think about insights, and you know, the wealth of data that we have available to us, I mean, we are now in a very data rich world and trying to weave what’s relevant and what’s not, and what have you, we tend to focus a lot as well, in terms of our insights on actionable insights in terms of our planning. So, I mean, they do what they say on the tin. So there is a lot of information, but we really want to focus on those actionable insights where, you know, it will inform an action or, or, you know, tell us about a response that needs to be made within our plans. So otherwise, we can get lost in the weeds there. So think obviously, you then look at metrics and you look at the performance of of your plans and such but you can also start up front in terms of trying to look at those things that will make a difference.

Garth Sundem   09:51

Interesting. So it sounds like insights are one component of creating a more holistic Stick understanding of omni channel strategy that may also be informed by metrics, which could be considered clues or insights. And could also be influenced by? I don’t know, I mean, the practicality of these of these strategies as well. I guess what I’m getting at is our insights, sort of the the prime influencer of omni channel and and what I’m wondering is if, again, if omni channel lives and dies by putting the audience out front, or then in insights, the prime influence on that omni channel strategy?

Elin Siddall   10:49

Absolutely. A great, great question. So the way that we approach which might help kind of contextualize the way that can be utilized, and we follow at opens on it called the open approach. So when you begin your Omni channel plan, you would look at observing your audience. So that would be where you would utilize the wealth of, of insights that you have, which might be from external sources, external sources, it could include your performance metrics, content previously executed, you then build a picture of what your audience needs. And you develop an omni channel plan, you then execute on that plan, you get your metrics back, and those metrics can then be used to reinforce that strategy. So it’s like one big feedback loop, where insights are kind of the driver to create and also change that as well,

Garth Sundem   11:43

to create and also change. Alright, thank you. Oh, go ahead.

Elin Siddall   11:47

I was just so mean, insights are normally one of the first parts of the planning. So the process but it isn’t, it is an iterative. So obviously, the open process that Robbins just talked through, we don’t, it’s not a tick box, right, insights done, move on. And actually insights then becomes a continuous piece, especially when you consider the fluidity of some landscapes you need to be obviously still reaching out to, to all of your sources to make sure that your plans are still relevant, or do you need to pivot? Or is there something else you need to adapt? Say, there’s new guidelines or such. So Insights is usually one of the first things you do but then it becomes continuous.

Garth Sundem   12:33

Right. So not just in the creation of an omni channel strategy, but in the evolution of an omni channel strategy. And that really good point, especially in a landscape, like omni channel, where things are changing at the pace of technology, I can see how you would need that continuous feedback. Alright, so we live in this data rich world, we can generate and analyze these insights, using a gold standard approach. What what does that allow us to do? What can we do now with omni channel based on insights that we might not have been able to do? Back when we all started gathering insights and an Excel sheet by hand, you know, in field interactions? Robyn, what do you think what what are? What are the impacts of these insights?

Robyn Davies   13:24

So at bill now, you know, with the technology with what we’re able to access about our audience, we do have a richer understanding than what we used to do. But also the difference between how insights would previously be used in medical communications versus now and more of an omni channel world, the goal instead of delivering kind of the average of what everybody wants in a piece of content, you know, if you surveyed your audience, they said, you know, on average, people prefer video content, and they want it to be five minutes long. What omni channel does instead is it will look at the segments that exist across the breadth of that data that you’ve accessed and make accommodations for the differences and how people want to learn their differences in communication preferences. So format, like the content, the channels that they access information on the data preferences, and can then deliver different content in different ways, which is right for that individual, that kind of segment that exists. So it allows more people to access more relevant content to them, rather than just going for kind of the average of what people in a few surveys might say as their preference that makes ultimately scientific information much more accessible to our audiences. And it’s a really powerful tool that we have within medical communications.

Garth Sundem   14:51

Right, because we’re not just speaking to one audience in Medical Affairs. We’re speaking to many audiences, and even within you know, our primary primary audience of HCP Here’s your you’re then using insights to segment within HCP profiles is let me just say, is that true?

Robyn Davies   15:10

Absolutely, yep. So you could look at one specialty and develop several segments that might exist, but then that one specialty, and accommodate for all of their differences. And that just allows you to provide much more relevant information to HCPs, which is much more vital now that we are in in such a different landscape of how KCP is a time poor and how they’re accessing information.

Garth Sundem   15:36

Boy this sounds, sounds complicated, Robyn, I’m glad that you’re implementing this and not me, because I can imagine this tree or a cascade of information flow, you know, from one poor publication. And then it’s got to go out into, oh, I don’t know, you know, 72 different formats, depending on customer segmentation. Nishal, is that sort of what what you see in your insights management? And is that challenging? I mean, can can you pull off super sub segmentation?

Nishal Patel   16:14

I think that is a big challenge. I think, from our perspective, obviously, Omni channel is fairly new, right to the industry, I think, from the learnings that we’ve done is, we’ve kind of taken the approach of keeping segmentation, keeping segmentation as simple as possible. And then, you know, just building on that, right, you start off with maybe two segments, and then you try and test out your journeys, get more insights, that, you know, go go back into that whole segmentation, Omni channel strategy. And then you segment further when you realize, okay, you know, X segment can use x channel, because that’s their preference. I think there’s no point starting with multiple segments of, let’s say, 10 different segments, and creating 10 Different omni channel journeys, because it becomes very challenging and very complicated, as you alluded to before Garth, and it becomes difficult for your cross functional team to really manage. When we talk about insights, you know, you’re trying to pull insights from not just your field teams, right, you’ve got medical information, you’ve got your field teams, you’ve got real world evidence generation, you’ve got so many different ways of gathering insight. So my advice to everyone listening to this podcast is keep it simple when you’re starting off, and then start building that omni channel house. Right? So you start off with your foundational blocks, and then you add that as you as you evolve the omni channel strategy.

Garth Sundem   17:52

That’s a really good point. And Robyn and Elin, from an implementation perspective. Do you recommend starting with a, you know, say a HCPs? Maybe we just segment them into, you know, some of them are scientific leaders, and some of them are providers, right. And then you can look at further segmenting, as you get further into the, I don’t know, insights, informed segmentation process? Or do you need to? Do you need to write out your entire segmentation journey at the start so that you’re not trying to rebuild things in a difficult way later? What do you think? Can you start simple? Or do you have a little thing?

Robyn Davies   18:43

No, absolutely. I think something that we know is our role is to make omni channel achievable and accessible. I think what we’ve been talking about sounds like what’s possible to do, the reality of what we achieve can often be very different, you know, Omni channel does require investment, but it is absolutely something that can be an iterative process. It is a stepwise approach. You know, it’s not something that you need all of the answers to begin with. We also adopt a piloting approach. So you can start with one audience or one market, see, test and learn from that that process and then utilize your insights from that also builds and reform what you’re doing. So absolutely, it is the reality of it is a kind of iterative process, rather than doing everything upfront.

Garth Sundem   19:34

Well, that’s funny. It’s, it’s almost like a regulatory clinical trial, where you where you get everyone across that first finish line, and then you look at how to segment that for for for later, patient populations. Okay. Sorry. So, I know we wanted to get in to how these insights actually become part of The medical communication strategy but that seems like another six podcasts. So I think maybe for today, let’s leave it there. So thank you to Nishal, Robyn and Elin for joining us today. To learn more about how your organization can partner with OPEN Health, visit OPENHealthGroup.com. MAPS members, don’t forget to subscribe. And we hope you enjoyed this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series: “Elevate”.