October 16, 2024

AI, Data, and the Future of Health Care Marketing: A Conversation With 4 Pharma Advertising Experts

By Eric Peacock, CEO and Co-founder, MyHealthTeam

Health care marketing is rapidly evolving, driven by AI, health privacy legislation, the need to reach more diverse patient communities, and the growth of direct-to-patient offerings. To help us sort the reality from the hype, we invited four brilliant partners from top pharma agencies to join a panel at our recent  MyHealthTeam Summer Summit in NYC. Their candid, unfiltered observations are summarized below. 

Our panelists:

• Sheyda Karvar — Head of media strategy at Fingerpaint Marketing
• Danielle Tate— Executive vice president client lead at N2, a division of Publicis Health Media
• Dmitry Tkach — Group director client management at Initiative
• Brad Fox — Vice president of health media at Dentsu Health

Disclaimer: All comments and opinions shared by the panelists are their own. They have not been approved or endorsed by their employers (or former employers) and do not necessarily represent their employers’ positions or opinions.  

AI for Dynamic Creative and Streamlining the Patient Experience

There’s undeniable excitement about AI’s potential. As Sheyda Karvar, head of media strategy at Fingerpaint Marketing pointed out, “Generative AI is revolutionizing dynamic content creation, offering new possibilities for tailored ads in strategic locations [based on the context and the viewer] instead of one animation that is running across all digital properties.” The pharma industry is still figuring out how to handle regulatory approvals for this type of dynamic content, but it’s exciting to see this potential new pathway.

Danielle Tate, executive vice president at Publicis Health Media, agreed. “AI will help to streamline the efficiency of the health care system in the same way that the EHR system helped improve efficiency behind the scenes, by making health care more convenient for physicians and doctors,” Tate said. 

Given the medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) challenges and the more focused, annualized budgets of the pharma industry, the panel suggested pharma marketers and ad agencies are looking beyond manufacturers for AI innovation. Online communities, endemic health publishers, and digital health players with fewer regulatory burdens will likely lead this charge. 

At MyHealthTeam, we’re testing dozens of uses of AI, including self-assessment tools like the new tool on MyMigraineTeam. We’re engaging AI to dynamically answer patients’ questions by sourcing medically reviewed content to prevent hallucinations, and we’re using AI to proactively suggest content patients might want to read based on their specific diagnosis and symptoms and the stage of their journey. In some cases, this increases engagement 10 to 15 times by simply meeting patients where they are and helping them sift through all of the information available to them. By testing rapidly, allowing pharma marketers to advertise around these opportunities, and sharing our learnings with our partners, we can bring innovation to patients faster.

New Ways To Measure Health Equity Programs

Danielle explained why DEI program measurement must have a new and different set of metrics than what we’ve used for most marketing programs historically. “Standard measurement tools [like Veeva Crossix or IQVIA] rely on anonymized health care data from participants in the health care system. So, the populations you aim to reach through a DEI program, who are not active in the health care system, won’t show up in that data. So perhaps the goal is getting these people diagnosed — a different metric altogether.”  

Sheyda shared her experience working on a sickle cell disease pain drug: “There’s all of these gaps in data that’s available for those patients who may not be in the health care system for a variety of socioeconomic reasons. This highlights the need for alternative measurement methods and a long-term focus on health equity, rather than just short-term ROI.”

Dmitry Tkach, group director client management at Initiative, agreed. “The industry has an opportunity to expand into cross-channel measurement,” he said. “Until then, marketers benefit from partnering with agencies and publishers to develop mixed market modeling and tap first- and zero-party data.”

Expanding on innovative health equity programs, Dmitry shared his experience working with a leader in HIV to launch a Spanish-language patient community. “It started with audience research and HIV patient insights from MyHealthTeam, where we learned that there was a significant demand for HIV content in the Spanish language. Our strategy became laser focused on creating safe spaces for the Latino audience with an HIV diagnosis to come together to share their experiences with others going through the same HIV journey — and get access to content in their preferred language. It really created a safe haven for this audience.” 

The result, myHIVteam en español, launched in the second quarter of 2024 in partnership with MyHealthTeam. The site has seen rapid adoption by the Spanish-speaking community and quickly earned a 2024 Fierce Pharma Marketing Award nomination in the multicultural category.

The time frame for measuring success in DEI also must change. “When expanding your addressable market [of potential patients] through DEI campaigns, you really want a longer term, two-year time horizon to be able to see those that don’t participate [in the health care system] initially get a chance to begin to participate,” explained Sheyda. 

Danielle summarized it well, saying that for health equity programs, “We need new ways to measure impact and build patient trust.”

Direct-to-Patient and Rare Disease Models

Direct-to-patient (DTP) initiatives are another way to expand access to underserved patient communities. Through our partnerships with Eversana and other partners, a DTP go-to-market strategy can bring the health care system to more patients in a way that better fits their schedules, lifestyles, and comfort levels in talking about their health. 

There is also the stark reality that, for an enormous amount of therapies coming to market in rare diseases, there is not an established, trained, and widely distributed network of physicians who are even able to diagnose these rare diseases. For many future patients, DTP models connecting them to specialists in their condition may be the primary way they learn about their condition.

Measurement for rare disease is also a problem given that many traditional measurement methods rely on population sampling. Recalling her experience with sickle cell disease, Sheyda explained, “Keep in mind that many rare diseases do not measure well due to the infrequency of rare disease diagnoses. I mean, they’re called ‘rare’ diseases for a reason, and sampling can miss them.” 

Build Trust Through Consistent Branding 

Brands can build trust with patients by having a consistent brand presence in marketing strategies. “There are benefits to brands for being consistent with their investment in certain digital spaces, because it builds a familiarity with the patients who are regularly visiting those sites or patient community pages,” explained Brad Fox, vice president of health media at Dentsu Health. “It may be frowned upon by patients if a brand is there for a couple months and then the person consuming that content never sees them again.” 

Sheyda agreed, “We need to think about the big picture and the long-term opportunity. Ask yourself, how can we build on what we’ve already been doing? And that doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever contract we have for this particular time period is exactly the same contract we’re going to have next year. Rather, ask yourself how we can continue to evolve and grow upon what we’re already doing?”

Data Privacy and Patient Safety

Danielle emphasized the importance of traditional media in an increasingly complex digital landscape. She shared, “We need to be more creative in our approach to reach patients as state privacy laws keep evolving. Do we remove those states from our targeting, or is there another way to reach those states? We are constantly trying to evolve and address these issues.”

“When Google announced the abandonment of deprecating third-party cookies, marketers initially saw that and thought, ‘I don’t have to worry about cookies anymore.’ But really, they still do,” said Brad. “Only 30 percent of internet users accept cookies right now, so that is a critical factor to digital advertising. Whatever strategy and approach that we were all leaning toward before needs to continue. No matter what decision Google makes regarding cookies, they’re always going to be anti-competition. So keep looking toward building direct relationships through trusted partners who have first- and zero-party data.”

MyHealthTeam is doubling down on building opted-in, privacy-compliant patient communities where patients share their health information with the expectation that we will tailor our content and advertisements to them. I believe that in the next year, we’re going to see marketing budgets going to two polar opposite channels: either programmatic or highly contextualized, opt-in patient communities like MyHealthTeam because the performance on communities is so strong.

4 Things Agencies Look for in a Good Partner 

I thought it might be fun to end the panel by asking what ad agencies look for in a partner.  The answers boiled down to four key tips:

1. Bring Patient Insights That Make the Case for Advertising

“Research or polling of patients that helps us understand their unanswered questions or unmet needs and supplements the knowledge we have now. Help us prove that there are compelling reasons why we should be advertising,” explained Sheyda.

2. Know When To Say Your Offering Isn’t a Fit

“Don’t force the story or your offering if it does not make sense to what was in the RFP [request for proposal],” Danielle explained.  “My respect goes up for those partners who say, ‘Honestly, this doesn’t make sense for us to respond to this RFP,’” added Brad.

3. Be a Responsive Partner

Brad emphasized that being truly responsive to the RFP is really critical and often ignored. “Ask yourself, ‘What are the little things that will make the agency team’s lives easier?’ For example, if we have two very similar partners, and one did everything on time, and one delivered it two days late and were missing half the info we requested in the RFP, that makes a difference.”

4. Be a Thought Partner

“Good solutions are born out of a strategic conversation on the business challenges and the patient community’s needs. Talk about those before jumping right to product solutions, and you will arrive at a much more satisfying experience and outcome,” shared Dmitry.

For Changemakers Like You

I want to thank our panelists for their candid and valuable insights. All four of these folks are changemakers and wonderful partners who embrace patient inputs, new technologies, and creative tactics to bring innovation to patients. It’s not always easy to create change. There are lots of walls to knock down when you are a pioneer.  We hope you will be a catalyst for change in your organization and be a future panelist for our next summit!

For questions, to join a future MyHealthTeam summit, or to leverage our expertise in achieving your marketing goals, contact us at [email protected] or use the form below.