Pharma is unique as an industry in the way that there are three equal voices that need to be heard – patients’, HCPs’ and pharma’s. As pharma brands, it’s all too easy to talk more than we listen. But in order to ensure what we say is meaningful, we need to be able hear what patients and HCPs have to say. The good news is that there are many ways that pharma can help give others a voice. Which is exactly what we want to see more of in 2017. And so, 2017's first edition of Spotlight On…is dedicated to discussing all the strategies and tactics we can use to create this three-way conversation. From taking a patient-centric approach and understanding patient behaviour, to creating personas and using personalisation effectively, we explore how you can ensure everyone is heard. By doing this, we’re ultimately improving engagement between pharma and our target audience. So everyone’s a winner!

1. 1Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
SPOTLIGHT ON...
MEDICAL
COMMUNICATIONS
IN 2017
COUCH MEDICAL
COMMUNICATIONS ©2017.
All rights reserved.
Inspiring audiences. Motivating change. Thinking beyond.
ISSUE4

2. IN THIS ISSUE, WE COVER:
Everyone can be given a voice. When it comes to diagnosis, treatment and condition
management, the voices of all those involved – pharma, HCPs and patients – need to
be heard. So it’s important that care processes and services are designed in such a
way that every party can be included, listened to, and can feel like they are in control.
Luckily, you can achieve all of this through co-design, also known as co-creation.
Targeting for real people. We’re all aware how difficult it’s becoming to reach
HCPs through traditional marketing methods. In fact, recent research is showing that
physicians are seeing less than 30% of reps who try to meet with them. So maybe
2017 is the year to forget tradition and strengthen your engagement strategy by
making it more targeted.
A deeper look into patient behaviour. In 2016, we’ve discussed patient behaviour
in great depth, and we’re hoping that the conversation will continue into 2017. With a
topic as complex as this, there is always more to discover, understand and address.
Personalised approaches. Personalisation is predicted to be a hot topic in 2017
across many industries, including pharma. But what sets pharma apart from the rest is
that the level of personalisation is required to go much deeper. With this in mind, we
pondered what would be the simplest way to create a personalised experience.
Better information is clear information. When it comes to providing patients
with information, clarity is vital. Lack of clarity can lead to patients forming their own
conclusions if information can be easily misunderstood, which in this industry, can be
quite dangerous!
Within this in mind, I hope you enjoy this issue and as always I would love to hear your
thoughts. You can email me ash@wearecouch.com or tweet me at @ash_rishi.
Till next time.
Ash Rishi
Managing Director
COUCH Medical Communications
2016 was certainly memorable, but now we look ahead and
discuss our hopes for what 2017 may bring for the industry.
For this issue of SPOTLIGHT ON… we are looking at
strategies and tactics the industry can better utilise,
and what we feel can improve engagement in medical
communications. This year our focus is on giving a voice to
all involved in healthcare, how is this achieved? We discuss
in this issue.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

3. Patient co-design
Stronger engagement strategies
Understanding patient behaviours
Personalisation
Deliver better patient information
IN THIS ISSUE

4. 4 | Medical communications
As the demand on health services increases, there’s an ever more pressing
need for three-way medical communications between pharma, HCPs, and
patients. Part of this need stems from the pressure on existing services,
but an equally large part comes from the fact that patients are now better
educated about their medical conditions and treatments than they were in
the past.
Patients want to be involved in the care process, to feel listened
to, included, and in control. Co-design helps pharma and healthcare
professionals find ways to involve patients in their treatment, prevention,
management, and understanding of the illnesses and conditions that beset
them. Gaining deeper understanding of the patient journey through every
stage of an illness also allows for more meaningful marketing interactions,
as well as streamlining and bringing about practical changes in the everyday
patient experience with drugs and services.
PATIENT CO-DESIGN
| Medical communications4

5. 5Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
CONNECTING CLINICAL
PRIORITIES WITH HUMAN
NEEDS
No treatment or health care plan can be said
to be truly patient-centric if it doesn’t involve
the patient’s thoughts, opinions and ideas from
the outset. Co-design takes into account the
perspectives of both the patients (or service users)
and the professionals who deliver them.
It creates a platform for shared responsibility,
but does not move patients towards total self-
management without medical care, or undermine
professional, clinical expertise.
Conducted properly, co-design opens
conversations between care designers and
the end users. These conversations can
change priorities, focus minds, and ultimately
build stronger, more trusting relationships
between pharma who produce the drugs, the
clinicians who administer and prescribe them,
and patients who use them.
PATIENT-CENTRICITY
Patient-centricity has become something of a
buzzword, but it should be much more. Co-design,
or co-creation as it’s also sometimes called, breathes
life into the phrase, showing how pharma take
medical communications with patients seriously:
that they actually ‘walk the talk’, understanding
problems and improving services and treatments.
Talking to patients can have many benefits
to pharma, including:
CREATING REAL CONNECTIONS
WITH PATIENTS: not just offering drugs or
treatments, but demonstrating understanding
of patient’s feelings that can lead to isolation,
especially in cases of rare or chronic illness.
CREATING EMPATHY: pharma and patients
are at opposite ends of the same pole, and
co-creation can help them bridge the divide,
bringing insights into each other’s contribution
to treating and managing disease or illness.
CREATING ONGOING INTERACTION:
co-creation isn’t a one-off exercise but an
ongoing collaboration that involves patients
at all stages of treatment, from diagnosis
to recovery.
CO-DESIGN COMPLIANCE
Building trust with patients requires a high degree
of authenticity in both attitude and practice, so
co-design needs to be, and is, compliant. Involving
regulatory and legal teams from the outset of the
co-design process is vital so compliance underpins
efforts to include the patient’s voice in building
future care solutions.
When approached from this standpoint, pharma
can see itself as a services company as much as
a drugs supply company. As well as considering
new drugs and strategies, the co-design process
and community involvement creates a mutually
beneficial foundation that brings customers and
suppliers together to find new pathways that make
things better.
As more healthcare practitioners and providers
engage in co-creating services with patients,
medical communications between all parties
— HCPs, patients and pharma — will form
an important part of treatment. Co-design
ensures all voices are heard, not just those of
the ‘professionals’, and gives pharma a wider
understanding of public healthcare and health
service needs, guiding them to develop drugs
and treatments that make a real difference.

6. 6 | Medical communications6 | Medical communications
For many pharma companies it’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach
HCPs with traditional marketing methods. But that doesn’t spell the end
of the familiar close relationship between pharma and their first lines of
contact. It just means the goal posts are in a slightly different place, and
a few changes in strategy are needed in order to gain better engagement
through targeted medical communications.
STRONGER ENGAGEMENT
STRATEGIES
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Recent research indicates most pharma marketing
is still shooting towards the old goal posts, in
that they’re not actively maximising the digital
opportunity. The same research highlighted that
doctors today estimate they spend around 84
hours a year dealing with pharma through non-
personal channels. This works out to around 64%
of their pharma interaction time, with 26,000 of
the most popular prescribers on the receiving end
of 2,800 pieces of communications every year
from the pharma industry.
Time pressured physicians have cut down on
the number of face-to-face meetings with
pharma sales reps. Research data from sales
and marketing firm ZS indicates that far fewer
physicians have time to meet with sales reps,
resulting in many now seeing less than 30% of
those who try to arrange meetings with them.
Clearly, medical communications must develop
a fresh approach, with more emphasis placed
on multichannel marketing efforts, delivering
carefully crafted messages that build and maintain
physicians’ trust. Despite the fact that the survey
analyses indicate that around 75% of physicians
don’t entirely trust pharma marketing information,
an (almost) equally large percentage (around
65%) indicate a willingness to interact with
pharma through social channels.

7. 7Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
CRAFTING THE RIGHT
MESSAGE
Thanks to online social interactions, patients are
better educated about their own health conditions,
and this newfound knowledge changes the way
they communicate with HCP’s and navigate their
personal patient journeys.
When pharma also understands that patient journey,
they have a framework that can shift the focus from
the product to the patient, and so create medical
communications that are more patient focused, and
therefore more helpful to physicians.
Deeper understanding of the patient journey allows
pharma to:
Co-design effective patient support systems
Get closer to patients through storytelling
Recognise the patient needs, from initial
symptoms through diagnosis to treatment
and medication.
BETTER ENGAGEMENT
THROUGH PERSONA
DEVELOPMENT
Customer personas are the secret sauce.
Done correctly, they’re incredibly powerful
mines of information that can sharpen medical
communications to achieve pinpoint accuracy.
One set of personas to cover all segments of a
customer base, however, isn’t enough. HCPs deal
with customers from all walks of life and at all
different stages of their patient journey.
What’s needed is a persona for each segment that
represents the customer at that particular journey
stage, and which thus meets the need of the HCP
to guide the patient through the stage at which they
come together.
This can only be achieved with research that delves
behind the clinical, into the realms of human needs
and emotions, problems and challenges. Personas
should represent real people more than they reflect
groups of statistics.
Instead of promoting only products and solutions
(which HCPs are already overloaded with) in non-
personal communications, pharma can demonstrate
patient empathy. They can become sympathetic
guides to HCPs, recognising the moment in the
patient journey when their product is most helpful.
ENGAGING THE PEOPLE
BEHIND THE PERSONAS
In creating real people personas that go beyond
statistics, pharma can also discover where those
actual people can be reached:
Which medical journals they read
Which forums they populate
Online networks
Which social media platforms they use
Other places they turn for information
Knowing where HCPs look for information is also
key to presenting medical communications in the
right format so they’re read, heard, understood,
and remembered at the exact time they’re needed.
7Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com

8. 8 | Medical communications
Understanding the behaviour of patients: the why, where and how they
do things as well as the reasons that prevent them doing those things, is
key to successful medical communications. In today’s connected world,
patients are bombarded with information, much of it no more than a rehash
of information they’ve seen many times before regarding health and illness.
Communications is, therefore, far more effective when it delivers something
new, something the patient (or potential patient) hasn’t seen before.
This is especially important for those people who have conditions that are
not yet diagnosed. The majority of patients who request information or
medication from their doctors following exposure to marketing messages,
already know they have the condition the medication treats. Reaching those
in pre-diagnosis stages (estimated at up to three quarters of those with
certain conditions such as bipolar and depression) offers pharma a large,
currently untapped pool of potential new customers.
UNDERSTANDING PATIENT
BEHAVIOURS
8 | Medical communications

9. 9Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
But beyond the benefits to pharma, better public
health on a wider scale is also achievable because
when conditions are diagnosed in their early
stages, the prognosis is often brighter.
Designing medical communications that reach the
heart of patient behaviour patterns, however, needs
a less traditional approach. Delving under the
surface, into the mind set and attitude that prompts
any behaviour is necessary in order to effect
behaviour change.
INFLUENCING BEHAVIOUR
FOR BETTER HEALTH
In order to influence and change behaviour, pharma
needs to understand and address the habits and
mind sets that cause patterns of behaviour:
What motivates patients?
Which external factors need to come together
to encourage patients to take up services or
treatments?
What habits or emotional responses need to
change in order to redirect patient behaviour?
Here are four aspects of human behaviour that
drive actions, build habits and influence ideas
and attitudes:
REMOVING BARRIERS. Even very small
barriers can prevent patients accessing
treatment. Barriers exist in all areas of life, and
are often external to the patient. Simple things
like transport availability can prevent someone
attending a support group, for instance.
Not being able to quickly find information on
a website can induce patients to give up the
search for help or education for a condition
or medication.
BUILDING MOTIVATION. Medical
communications can be used to reinforce a
patient’s intrinsic motivation towards better
health, boosting self-esteem through positive
values, and recognising and celebrating small
milestones. By understanding what motivates
their target market to achieve their goals,
pharma can design communications that
underpin positive values.
THE SOCIAL ASPECT. By encouraging social
connections, pharma can subvert the growing
sense of isolation that besets many people
with some health conditions. Being connected
socially to others can lead to more timely
treatment when it’s needed, induce positive
behaviour through a sense of belonging and
helping others. It encourages people to share
knowledge and give support.
SELF-BELIEF. If people don’t believe they
can do a thing, they probably can’t, so lack of
belief in one’s own capabilities or abilities can
quickly lead to abandoned health plans and
a return to old, unhealthy habits. By providing
tools that allow patients to record and document
achievements and progress, pharma could
encourage adherence to treatment programmes
or fitness routines.
Incorporating behavioural approaches in medical
communications can include information on
support groups, social networks both face-to-
face and online, community initiatives, and fitness
programmes.
Getting undiagnosed patients to recognise and
seek help with worrying symptoms is one thing.
Encouraging them to then change the behavioural
habits that lead to ill health, and maintain that
change in the long term, takes an entirely different
brand marketing strategy - one that understands
aspects of behavioural science.

10. 10 | Medical communications
PERSONALISATION
10 | Medical communications
Real personalisation comes about through understanding the needs of your
audience. It takes deep listening in order to truly grasp the difficulties they
face, taking in data and information from diverse sources that may include
statistics as well as the results of surveys, questionnaires, and face-to-
face interviews. When all this information is synthesised through accurate
analysis, the equation between patients, healthcare providers, and pharma,
balances. Medical communications should address the needs of the target
audience more than the needs (or end marketing goals) of pharma.
COMMON GOALS,
COMMON GROUND
With a typical working day running at around
12 hours, GPs don’t have much spare time to
engage with pharma representatives or read
branded medical information. In fact, statistics
reveal that branded pharma materials are not
accessed on a regular basis. And yet, doctors
still need to read up on medical matters to stay
abreast of drug and treatment innovations, and
pharma still needs to promote their goods and
services. Both sides of the industry are offering
what the other needs, and yet they’re often like
ships passing in the night, close but not actually
connecting. This disconnect provides
an opportunity for pharma to do better.
Medical practitioners, of whom there are almost
240,000 in the UK, work in all kinds of different
environments:
They see patients at differing stages in their
illness or treatment
They’re of different ages
Have varying levels of experience
Have different educational needs
Specialise in different areas
Deal with varying demographics, some more
challenging than others
Have differing learning preference

11. 11Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
We live and operate in a multichannel world,
with many avenues down which to explore and
find information. Personalising education and
information materials by creating them to speak
specifically to an audience within an identified
group is the most effective way pharma can
ensure they reach their target market.
A PATIENT-CENTRIC
APPROACH
Putting the patient at the centre of marketing
activities demonstrates understanding of the
challenges that face HCP’s on a daily basis,
and a willingness to help them create
meaningful services.
Take, for instance, non-adherence by patients.
It may be resistance to taking medication for fear
of side effects, reluctance to adopt a new lifestyle
or stick with a new diet, and can have many points
of origin. It’s an ongoing problem that creates
mountains of unused prescription drugs in the UK,
and costs around $600 billion every year to the
pharma industry.
The pharma industry, with its access to data and
technology, and through the creation of detailed
patient personas, is ideally positioned to tackle the
issues concerning adherence and non-adherence,
whether it is intentional or accidental.
Analyses that target known areas of conflict such
as this can aid pharma in the creation of customer
personas built around an understanding of the
issues behind non-adherence. What motivations,
fears, beliefs, or priorities drive a patient to ignore
or disregard a prescribed treatment programme?
Devising medical communications around this
issue alone would benefit both pharma and HCPs
if it resulted in fewer wasted drugs and provided
doctors with a fresh way to approach patient
non-adherence, or a way of offering stronger
patient support.
BRINGING DATA TO LIFE
Personalisation represents the real people whose
lives, actions, attitudes and beliefs or practices
inform the bulk of statistics. Information gleaned
from both primary and secondary data can be
broken down into market segments to create
smaller, more concise groups. Within these groups
are the small details that make up real lives,
complete with specific problems and challenges.
We may talk about market segments and
personas, but let us not lose sight of the fact that
medical communications are most effective and
most personal when they’re devised and written
for real people in real life situations.
11Medical communications |

12. 12 | Medical communications
DELIVER BETTER PATIENT
INFORMATION
We all have different preferred learning methods and ways we like to access
information. Even those who haven’t given the issue much thought will, if we
think about it, realise we either like to see pharma content and instructions
in written format, or we prefer pictorial diagrams to indicate a course of
action. Most of us like a mixture of the two.
There are other aspects that either promote or
hamper learning too, and these revolve around
how information is presented — its format. Enough
research evidence exists to make some features
accepted practise when formatting printed or web-
based info:
Font sizes and typeface
Use of headings
Bold or italic text to highlight salient points
Plenty of white space
Judicious use of bullet points
These physical aspects exist because we
understand human behaviour when reading: how we
skim text, how we dismiss text that seems hard to
read or dense, jargon-filled or complex, for instance.
One aspect of human nature that’s often
overlooked, however, is the tendency to ask
questions and make up our own solutions if the
answers aren’t clear. This human behavioural trait
is of particular relevance to pharma in all marketing
stages, but can especially help with the creation of
patient information leaflets (PILs).
BETTER PILS
Patients read PILs like they read anything else.
A quick skim down for the bits that apply to their
personal situation, then backtrack to the parts that
stand out. Any information that appears unclear,
ambiguous, or doesn’t answer the question ‘why’ is
likely to be passed over or ignored.
Examples include such instructions as ‘do not
take with alcohol’ or ‘always take with food’. Why?
What will happen otherwise? If patients don’t see
the need to follow directions, they’re far more
likely to disregard them, which can exacerbate the
non-adherence problem and lead to ineffective
medication or worsened side effects.
12 | Medical communications

13. 13Medical communications |www.wearecouch.com
CLARITY, DEPTH, AND
BREADTH IN SCIENTIFIC
PATIENT INFORMATION
As patients become better informed on
their conditions, the need for clear medical
communications in PILs, grows. A recent survey
conducted among cancer patients and care groups
across 39 countries revealed a significant 60% of
respondents complained that the science behind
treatment innovations was not clearly explained.
While the patients they are intended to support
are aware of scientific advances, the majority of
patients felt left out of the communication loop.
They wanted to know more about how offered
treatments worked, why they worked, and how
they affected personal outcomes. Almost 55%
of respondents to the survey agreed that an
improved understanding of the scientific concept
behind a new treatment improved a patient’s
quality of life and their clinical outcome.
One of the biggest barriers to patient
understanding was a lack of familiarity with
scientific concepts and language. Simple,
clear, jargon-free scientific information that
patients could access easily, such as online or
through social media for example, would reach
more patients.
PROVIDING BETTER
INFORMATION THROUGH
CONTENT MARKETING
The survey demonstrates the clear need for
pharma to simultaneously simplify and extend
the information made available to patients. But
before pharma can produce the kind of content
patients or their HCPs need, there has to be
an understanding of the questions, doubts, and
concerns clamouring for answers. A sound way
of digging into the most pressing issues is by
creating personas. The insights gleaned can then
be used to build content marketing strategies that
engage, educate, and inform.
It is not, of course, a ‘once and done’ strategy.
Market segment needs change, ways of accessing
information appear and vanish just as quickly,
changing people’s behaviour accordingly.
So there’s also an ongoing need to measure,
evaluate and analyse response in order to gauge
content effectiveness.
When the medical communications generated
by pharma align with the questions being asked
or concerns being raised, the result is always
better information.

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16. 16 | Medical communications16 | Medical communications

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18. © COUCH 2017.
At COUCH, we create content that responds to the known
needs and preferences of your target audience, and elicits
the desired response from them.
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