Talking Medicines is targeting a specific problem for pharmaceutical companies, understanding what actually influences healthcare professionals before they decide whether to prescribe a medicine.
Pharmaceutical marketing teams typically track reach, impressions, clicks and engagement to measure the impact of campaigns. These figures show whether HCPs have seen or interacted with content, but they do not necessarily explain why a doctor may consider, reject or continue using a particular treatment.
Talking Medicines says prescribing intent is influenced by several factors, including clinical evidence, treatment experience, tolerability, contraindications, administration, monitoring requirements, treatment alternatives and local guidelines. Patient requests and discussions with pharmaceutical representatives can also influence how medicines are considered.
This creates a gap between marketing activity and prescribing intent. A campaign can generate strong engagement without addressing the questions or concerns that are affecting treatment decisions.
The company is using analysis of HCP conversations to address that gap. Its DrugVoice platform analyses unstructured conversations using artificial intelligence, natural language processing and healthcare-specific data science.
Rather than simply measuring how frequently a medicine is mentioned, the platform looks at what HCPs are saying about it. This can include discussions around clinical evidence, treatment experience, tolerability, differentiation, patient suitability and unmet needs.
For pharmaceutical companies, this information can provide a clearer view of the issues influencing treatment consideration. It can also show whether the messages being delivered through marketing campaigns reflect the issues HCPs are discussing in practice.
The distinction between exposure and intent is significant. Two medicines could receive similar levels of marketing engagement while generating very different conversations among HCPs. One may be discussed positively in relation to a particular patient group, while another may attract questions about tolerability or differentiation.
Talking Medicines is therefore focused on turning conversations that would otherwise remain unstructured into information that pharmaceutical companies can analyse.
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