Enhancing patient engagement with technology

The dawn of the digital era has enabled pharma companies to bring a paradigm shift in its interactions with doctors and patients. The panel discussion on ‘Enhancing Patient Engagement with Technology’ began a dialogue within the pharma marketing community on how they can engage with patients better in order to serve their needs more effectively and achieve marketing objectives within the regulatory framework of the industry. The discussions focussed on four areas, namely: understanding the dynamics of digital marketing strategies in the life sciences industry, new age marketing strategies to engage with the patients, deploying digital technology platforms to efficiently reach healthcare professionals and consumers and ethical marketing practices for regulatory compliance.

During the discussion, panelists pointed out that pharma marketing leaders need to think beyond the pill and must reach out to patients with innovative strategies aided by digital technologies.

Discussing on the kind of marketing campaigns that exists today and the way digital technologies are changing these initiatives, they highlighted that technologies such as AI, IoT and blockchains have helped to improve efficacy and effectiveness of existing marketing campaigns and reach out to end users – patients. They also mentioned that technologies such as AI and IoT are facilitating companies to collect immense useful data as well as helping in apllying data more effectively. Whereas Blockchain is helping to provide much needed data integrity.

Moreover, experts on the panel also spoke about IoT, ChatBox, Mhealth apps etc., which can aid pharma marketing experts to reach out to patients and provide them with valuable insights on various diseases and their management.