The Case for Patient-Centric Tailoring to Improve Brand Outcomes

One of the main objectives in both marketing and health education is to reach the right individuals with the right messaging in an attempt to change their behavior.  This is the value of patient centricity in healthcare.  Patient-centric messaging not only provides useful information to patients, but also strives to motivate them to achieve positive outcomes, leveraging a communication style with which they are comfortable.  A meta-analysis of tailored, web-based content indicates these interventions can impact behavioral outcomes and help people maintain these behaviors over time.¹  A separate meta-analysis of printed material, conducted in 2007, also supports the use of tailoring to achieve changes in health behaviors.²

The benefits of patient-centric tailoring are both cognitive and psychosocial.  On the cognitive side, tailoring increases attention, self-referential thinking (thinking about oneself with regards to the message) and comprehension of the message.  On the psychosocial side, tailoring can address and even alter attitudes, norms or agreed upon cultural rules that guide behavior and self-esteem.

Fulfilling Life Science Industry Needs

In a recent research project, we were asked to explore patient experiences with our client’s product in a rather competitive market.  In an effort to prevent treatment discontinuation, our client wanted to thoroughly understand which resources patients on the product have used in the past, what they have had to overcome while taking the medication, and what tools/information they benefited from.  Through a deeper understanding of the patient experience, our client hoped to tailor their messages and materials to align with the changing needs of patients over time as well as anticipate what the impact of competitors in this space and take these learnings to constructively communicate with them.

To achieve these research goals, we first conducted a background screener to identify qualified patients within the Inspire community who had taken the client’s product for a certain amount of time.  Once this finite population was identified from a much larger pool, the team conducted in-depth interviews with each individual, listening carefully for what the patients were thinking, feeling, doing, struggling with, or needed at each stage of the healthcare journey.

Kathryn Ticknor, Inspire’s Senior Research Manager and lead researcher on this project noted that “While everyone is an individual with their own story, there were many strong recurring themes along each of the stages of the patient journey.  Our goal, by investigating the patient journey, was to help build a ‘roadmap’ for the client to navigate and develop materials for patients that not only address their needs but also speaks to them in a manner with which they are accustomed.”

Maximizing the Call to Action in Healthcare

With insights provided through patient-centric research, clients can gather the information necessary for successful message tailoring.  As demonstrated through various large-scale studies, tailoring is paramount to create content that impacts patient outcomes and should be an essential tool for all marketing and health education efforts in the future.  In the current healthcare environment, where patient centricity has become a cornerstone for all involved parties, conducting research that allows for companies to communicate with, rather than, talk to patients should be the first step in creating truly successful campaigns. See our case studies for more information.

References:

¹ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10810730.2013.768727

² http://pham315.pbworks.com/f/Noar+et+al+2007.pdf