Embracing Patient Communities in 2023
If the global COVID-19 crisis has taught us one thing, it’s the importance of community. During the worst days of the pandemic, it was truly heart-warming to see how people came together to help those who were struggling.
Digital technology, especially social media, has made it easier than ever for people to connect with one another and share information and advice. As our previous article on misinformation and disinformation laid out, this is not always a force for good, but social media is more than capable of being a source of support and community just as much as it is a negative influence.
The fact of the matter is that many people seek out information online regarding their health concerns before even booking an appointment with their GP and pharma brands would do well to tap into these online communities to ensure information being shared is accurate and to seek further advocacy for their treatments.
Online Information Seeking Behavior
A 2021 literature review published in the journal Healthcare and archived in the National Library of Medicine, sought to evaluate the public’s tendency to seek out healthcare information online.
According to the findings of the review, 75% of health information seekers believed the information they discovered online had a significant impact on their healthcare decision making process. When it comes to the frequency of engaging with online information, 60% did so on a weekly basis and over a quarter several times daily. Perhaps unsurprisingly smartphone owners were more likely to engage more frequently.
83% searched for health information using a general search engine, such as Google and Yahoo, while 15% of the online seekers tended to search on specific health information websites. Social media were more likely to be searched and used to address stress-related issues. Users mentioned specific social media platforms and user-generated online information sites such as Quora and Reddit during the review.
Here we see a tendency for people to default to online sources when they have concerns regarding their health. Social media platforms such as Reddit, being specifically mentioned in the review is important for our purposes as it is through these channels where online communities tend to form. Reddit in particular has an entire business model built around its segregated r/ communities.
Tapping into Online Communities
Broadly speaking, there are four distinct types of online healthcare community:
- Long-term treatment support communities address the challenges faced by those needing chronic care for ongoing and potentially lifelong conditions such as psoriasis, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.
- Point of need communities are for patients facing certain situations in their life such as cancer, chemotherapy, or ongoing surgeries. Patients usually seek out these communities searching for sympathy, camaraderie, and to be surrounded by others who have experienced the same thing as them.
- Long-diagnosis disease communities focus on delivering timely knowledge and early identification of symptoms to educate patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers. The goal of these communities is to drive earlier diagnoses for diseases like Alzheimer’s, AS1, or endometriosis, and reduce the diagnosis timeline for patients.
- Healthcare provider communities seek to provide ongoing communication regarding the treatment and management of diseases directly to healthcare providers. Ideal for less common diseases which are seeing rapid advancement in treatment and for raising awareness of conditions, such as diabetes, which are a rising threat.
The key factor to consider when including online communities in your marketing strategy is that they are primarily set up to offer support and information to people suffering from specific conditions. If pharma brands are to connect with patients in these spaces, it must be done sensitively and with a focus on providing information and advice and not feature blatant product advertising.
However, by tapping into these communities, pharma brands can connect directly with the end users of their products and deliver evidence-based and actionable healthcare advice, whilst simultaneously soliciting feedback from patients regarding those treatments. By establishing genuine caring relationships with patients, pharma brands can hopefully turn those communities into brand advocacy channels and create a mutually beneficial environment where patients can enjoy better clinical outcomes and they can connect more meaningfully with new audiences.
Final Thoughts
Online communities are becoming increasingly popular and influential among patient populations. While sensitively engaging with these bodies can be challenging for pharma brands the results of successfully doing so can be enormously beneficial for those on both sides of the pharma/patient divide. Social media platforms are going to continue to grow in importance when it comes to healthcare information seeking behavior, so pharma brands would do well to act now.
Patient communities are sure to be part of the conversation at Future Pharma 2023, being held in June at The Westin Copley Place, Boston, MA.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.