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Sophie Jones, Director of Strategic DevelopmentHowever, doing so is easier said than done, and health systems across the globe are struggling to deliver their messages effectively in the new, digital world. Leveraging cookie-cutter methods of marketing a product does not reflect profitably in the context of pharmaceutical products and medical devices will not have the desired levels of engagement in today. Utilising Veeva to support the efficient development and approval of content has proven to be incredibly efficient, where it helps increase engagement and interactivity through Veeva Engage. The platform does so whilst being able to actively track data analytics and usefulness of the content to an HCP. To truly capitalise on the full potential of all that Veeva’s solutions have to offer, Alpharmaxim Healthcare Communications enables the healthcare industry to educate the pharma industry and engage their customers more effectively. The goal is to ensure that new behavioural changes help achieve the best patient outcomes and clinical practice.
Alpharmaxim, founded in 2001, focuses on helping speciality healthcare clients better express their science, ideas and stories in a more compelling manner. The company approaches healthcare communications from a rather unique perspective—referred to as the Belief Continuum™—that strengthens the narrative of a biotech or pharmaceutical organisation. The Belief Continuum™ was developed to generate a lasting change in behaviour. Alpharmaxim apply their knowledge of belief change and behavioural science alongside extensive experience and insight in the areas of specialty healthcare, including rare diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and vaccines, to develop stories based on both scientific evidence and emotion. They then articulate the story through appropriate communications, whether that be a scientific publication, patient story campaign, or training materials for the field force.
Alpharmaxim offers a slew of innovative, flexible, and agile services that streamline marketing communication operations. The company firmly believes that stories are extremely powerful and necessary if a client wishes to connect with healthcare professionals, patients and their families more deeply , deliver engaging educational materials, increase disease awareness, and support strategy development and product launch, “Our patented Belief Continuum™ allows us to dive deep into existing behaviours of an audience, identify the driving beliefs behind those behaviours and effectively start to reshape those beliefs to enable audiences to be more accepting and receptive of new products in the healthcare market,” expresses Sophie Jones, Director of Strategic Development at Alpharmaxim.
The Belief Continuum™ approach better defines an organisation’s marketing strategies with strong scientific evidence pertaining to a product to create cohesive, convincing evidence-based stories. This new content, with a fresh perspective on the features and competencies of a client’s offerings or brand, is designed to gradually shift the beliefs of a key audience with the appropriate messaging. “By understanding where existing disparities and uncertainties lie, we develop a narrative that is appropriate and relevant to each key stakeholder, generating engagement and understanding,” states Sophie Alpharmaxim has developed several methods and techniques to overcome the lack of face-to-face interaction between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals (HCP) in today’s increasingly digitalised environment.
The company moulds content in a more modern format, with bite-sized and modular content created to be as interactive as possible, and impressionable with an immediate ‘call to action.’ Once the overarching story and journey is thoroughly defined, Alpharmaxim guides its clients to deliver a new, more effective communications strategy. “Our clients can be certain that once they have their content in place, we will work closely with them to confirm the relevance and appropriateness of their marketing material and content, pulling each strand of the narrative through planned tactics to ensure that the message is covered and the story is consistent,” says Sophie.
If a client is not already well-ensconced within Veeva, we work through their communications plans to make sure that they are as optimized as possible
This revitalized content is then pushed through optimised channels to ensure maximum audience engagement. And all of the company’s offerings conform to the stringent regulations of healthcare authorities across markets.
Tying in such robust capabilities with Veeva’s impressive CRM and Vault PromoMats solutions, Alpharmaxim is empowered to fully support clients without any limitations. Sophie and her team of healthcare communication experts eliminate all complexities a client may face while using Veeva, expediting creation, review, and distribution of 100 percent compliant content. “If a client is not already well-ensconced within Veeva, we work through their communications plans to make sure that they are as optimized as possible,” explains Sophie. For example, converting a standard core visual aid (CVA) into an interactive visual aid (IVA) is a fairly simplified task through Veeva’s fully optimized CRM system. Alpharmaxim additionally supports a client firm to engage with their target audience or customer before a CVA is developed. Doing so can ensure that the content is developed optimally from the beginning, saving time and money. “We assist our clients by moving them away from ‘habitual’ tactics in marketing,” adds Sophie.
To best elucidate on the efficacies of Alpharmaxim’s services, Sophie shares the case study of a Europe-based client with a specialty in rare diseases that had the opportunity to engage with external HCPs in a meeting environment and sell their product. “The programme required a split in focus, as some attendees came from countries where the product was not yet launched. Attendees could only participate in certain elements of the meeting, but this was able to be managed in advance through Veeva Vault. Alpharmaxim ensured continuous and effective engagement with delegates by providing aa personalised journey through the meeting. Utilisation of an interactive meeting App designed to increase interaction (both with the faculty and peer-to-peer networking opportunities), appropriate sharing of meeting content (approvals via Veeva Vault), adding notes and comments to slides, and providing feedback, generated high levels of engagement throughout the two-day meeting. The content in the App was also individualized and tailored to each category of attendee depending on their key focus and area of interest. While improving delegate belief in the benefits of changing behaviour around optimal disease management, Alpharmaxim was also able to gather valuable metrics and insights on how they can better enable behavioural changes to improve healthcare communication. “This shift in belief and future disease management behaviour was a result of appropriate content developed based on the learnings from the Belief Continuum™,” expresses Sophie.
By understanding and addressing the existing barriers to belief with evidence-based information, Alpharmaxim is leading the charge in Global healthcare communications. Moving forward, the company intends to continue building its expertise in behavioural science to offer a fully measurable and digitalised Belief Continuum™ offering to its clients. The robust healthcare marketing and communications agency, with its collaborative partnership with Veeva, is set to revolutionise the manner in which the industry tells their story. The company also seeks to support organisations in fending off the pandemic with effective new digitalised workflows. “We are expanding our team, offering increased flexible working patterns, and building our expertise in digital design to support our clients,” concludes Sophie.
Company
Alpharmaxim Healthcare Communications
Management
Sophie Jones, Director of Strategic Development
Description
Alpharmaxim is a communications agency built on a commitment to make a real difference to patients, families, and professionals by helping speciality healthcare clients tell their story and fulfil their promises.
The company approaches healthcare communications from a rather unique perspective—referred to as the Belief Continuum™—that strengthens the narrative of a biotech or pharmaceutical organisation. The Belief Continuum™ was developed to generate a lasting change in behaviour. Alpharmaxim apply their knowledge of belief change and behavioural science alongside extensive experience and insight in the areas of specialty healthcare, including rare diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and vaccines, to develop stories based on both scientific evidence and emotion
Novel therapies, often with expensive price tags and very limited patient populations, require strategic new positioning if they are to have maximum positive impact. Whether to challenge established prescribing practices, or to effectively get across a therapy’s value to health authorities and investors, drug developers and licence holders must adapt to the increased sophistication now needed in their communications strategies.
This isn’t simply a case of educating the market about the new product’s benefits, though. There are other factors that keep decision-makers returning to habitual choices. It is for this reason that behavioural science, long proven in nudging the public to make greener or healthier choices, is rising swiftly up the pharma agenda.
Behavioural science draws on psychological theory and the social sciences to understand why individuals follow or resist certain behaviours. Armed with that understanding, drug developers and marketers can position products differently.
The science of behavioural change
In a public health or ‘responsible citizen’ context, behavioural science has yielded striking results across a range of high-profile cases. These have included encouraging people to follow COVID-19 guidelines. Behavioural science has also been used to encourage vaccine uptake, and motivate people to make healthier lifestyle choices, such as increasing physical exercise.
At Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport more than two decades ago, repeat issues with the cleanliness of the men’s toilets prompted alternative thinking. Putting up signs did nothing to inspire ‘a better aim’, but when the creative team designed a realistic ‘fly’ into the ceramic of the urinals, suddenly users’ ‘targeting’ became more accurate. With the right motivation, the change happened in a very measurable way – the airport WC facilities saw an 80% reduction in urinal spillage and an 8% reduction in cleaning costs.
Accuracy of aim aside, in life sciences behavioural science has a powerful role to play in medical communications – specifically in overcoming barriers to changing prescribing behaviour. This is important so that healthcare providers (HCPs) don’t automatically default to their habitual choices of medical or treatments, but become more open to emerging options that may improve patient outcomes. So much so that the UK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) is now advocating the use of behavioural science in the design of interventions such as marketing campaigns, to ensure that important new biopharma innovation fulfils its potential for patients.
Identifying & overcoming the subtler barriers to change
HCPs’ reasons for falling back on tried and tested treatment choices might seem obvious, e.g., commitment to recommended first-line treatments, budget restrictions, and/or a lack of knowledge of the emerging options. Yet, the reality is usually more complex.
The established COM-B model for behavioural science sets out 93 different techniques and how they can be successfully combined to address barriers to change, based on the relative roles of Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation as determinants of current Behaviour (COM-B).
As HCPs strive towards their claimed goals of increased patient centricity, and place more emphasis on the patient experience, as well as quality of life, understanding and proactively overcoming a given combination of barriers to behavioural change in a very targeted way among prescribers, or drug funders, will be important if patients are to gain access to the best options now available to them.
To highlight the extent of the problem, detailed research is being conducted into why the latest ostensibly-transformational treatments for Parkinson’s disease aren’t making headway - despite early promise. The findings, due to be published later this spring, are likely to highlight the need for an overhaul of medical communications.
Beyond education: The Parkinson’s paradox
The Capability element of what enables a change in behaviour is typically only a small factor in what’s holding prescribers back in making different choices. Once a new drug has been approved, and made available, supported by a wealth of scientific information, the issues typically revolve more around the level of motivation to take a new path, and the perceived opportunity.
It may be that the HCPs involved don’t have access to the right resources to see through a new treatment plan. Or perhaps prescribers are not being encouraged to try something new by their peers, or by the system they are in, are hampered by a lack of time, or by a failure to see the value of the new path. In the case of rare diseases, HCPs and patients may have accepted as inevitable what many people would consider a gruelling regime if it is keeping the individual alive. A new therapy might be seen to disrupt the equilibrium that had been achieved, even where there is a promise of an improved quality of life.
In common with other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s has been the subject of important novel treatments, which have been heralded with great fanfare, but have not delivered for patients. After a series of failed launches, it would seem that no amount of new education can substantially tackle the sense of poor motivation, where confidence has been eroded. A more involved approach will be needed.
From intuition to evidence: Forming a new communications plan
Distilling the particular combination of ‘blockers’ to behaviour change is the first step in designing an effective medical communications campaign. Ideally, this needs to be guided by a structure, framework, or methodology, to ensure that campaigns are evidence-, rather than assumption-based, and have maximum impact across the target blend of channels.
Behaviour change frameworks contain a set of instructions to guide the development of a behaviour change strategy, in this case a medical communications campaign. Drawing on the COM-B model – which differentiates Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation as drivers of Behaviour – medical communications teams can start to determine what kind of campaigns might work best to drive change.
COVID-19 required a series of new behaviours, starting with fastidious hand-washing, face-covering, and keeping a distance from others, which can be mapped to the COM-B model. Getting the public on board required improving their knowledge of what to do and how (Capability); ensuring they had access to soap/hand gel or face coverings (Opportunity); and developing a clear plan of when they should do these things and aligning this with why they needed to do it or what they would get from it (Motivation).
With strong, evidence-based insights into the changes that are needed, and the specific barriers that need to be overcome, it becomes easier to identify the right type of message and content, as well as the most effective combination of modes of delivery.