Turning nudges into big wins in point-of-care marketing

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has supercharged the art of nudging through context-driven real-time insights and predictive analytics, transforming them into powerful tools for improved engagement and outcomes. By analyzing vast datasets and identifying patterns, AI enables the delivery of hyper-personalized, timely messages that resonate with the healthcare providers (HCPs) and patients’ needs. The messages not only help improve HCP-patient interactions but also deliver meaningful business outcomes in point-of-care (POC) marketing. 

A recent panel, sponsored by Doceree, was held at MM+M Media Summit 2024, where, Jack O’Brien, managing editor, MM+M, moderated a discussion between Sarah Bast, EVP, Publicis Health Media (PHM); Kamya Elawadhi, chief client officer, Doceree; and Dominick Oliverio, VP, oncology biosimilars and U.S. portfolio marketing lead, Pfizer. The panel explored how smart nudges enrich HCP-patient interactions and enhance business outcomes.

Designing nudges for point-of-care

“Dr. Cass R. Sunstein defined ‘nudge theory’ as a concept in behavioral economics that focuses on identifying subtle actions or interventions to guide individuals toward better or positive decisions. By presenting preferred choices in a structured way and leveraging contextually relevant information and data, the theory empowers individuals to make more informed and effective decisions, ultimately improving outcomes,” Elawadhi said, kicking off the conversation.

Nudge theory can be a powerful marketing tool. “We can provide the most relevant information in the most timely manner at the POC,” Bast said. “It’s all about that right messaging and what you’re putting in that messaging based on one or all of those characteristics of the patient and serving that HCP that appropriate message when they’re with that appropriate patient.”

With POC, marketers tend to focus on nudging the prescription, but they can also work up the funnel. For a cancer patient, for example, a brand can “remind the physician to consider a gene panel because if you can get the gene panel and that patient is positive for that gene mutation, there’s a good chance that’s going to lead to that prescription,” Oliverio said. These nudges provide resources that will improve patient-HCP interactions and “help that physician be the best for every patient.”

The nudge architecture can have a real impact on the HCP’s behavior. “An HCP deals with so much data and information with the variety of patient conditions and drug choices they have to face,” Elawadhi said. “Nudging helps you pick the right data set, make informed decisions for improved patient outcomes and strengthen HCP-patient conversations, by simply showing the reminders and information that’s important and relevant for that specific HCP and the patient condition.”

The role of generative AI and predictive analytics

GenAI and predictive analytics help fuel nudges by identifying patterns, behaviors and disease states within the data that relates to the patient and HCP.

“You should see each HCP office like an individual target audience, and you can only do it using AI,” Elawadhi explained. “AI eases that whole operational aspect and also analyzes and presents the insights. It’s not just picking out the right information set but also recommending that a certain patient can do better on a specific therapy, considering 50-60% of patients with similar issues were treated in a similar way.”

A good use case for leveraging AI is at the disease state. It can be taxing on the healthcare system and HCP to exclude multiple conditions. “AI is really good at identifying patterns that aren’t so visible to the human eye,” Oliverio said. “If I was working on a brand that was a diagnosis of exclusion, I would lean in to find ways to leverage AI to help make those physicians’ lives easier, to better identify this patient type.”

Effective nudges require context to ensure relevance and that comes from the ability to gather, interpret and integrate data from different sources. “It depends on each use case as a marketer decides which data set is most efficient and relevant to a drug type,” Elawadhi explained. “There is an ample amount of data available—be it that from the patients, HCPs, insurance companies or pharmacies.”

Exciting resources such as lab data or wastewater data offer marketers new opportunities for interacting at the POC. “It’s an opportunity to leverage that data to go to a physician, either with your sales force or through nudge theory, to let them know about environmental factors that may be impacting the patients that are walking in,” Oliverio said. “Could you leverage that wastewater data to go into a physician to say you may see a spike in patients that are coming in with XYZ symptoms? It’s very relevant because it’s specific to your geographic location.”

GenAI and underutilized data sources have the potential to make a difference in marketing and the healthcare industry; however, there still have to be guardrails in place to rein in any ethical regulatory concerns. “We love to say, ‘data always speaks the truth,’” Elawadhi said. “There has to be a logical response or understanding behind it.” To ensure it uses data responsibly, PHM recently received its HIPAA certification. “We are making sure we are not misusing or misleading any data, and we want similar things from our partners,” she added.

With the regulations and protections of POC systems, “it becomes less of a concern about making sure we’re doing it the right way, because the customer doesn’t want us in there, and more about the barrier of operationalizing,” Oliverio said.

Impact on patient outcomes

While AI-driven nudges can enhance patient outcomes and improve HCP engagement, challenges remain in integrating fragmented data sources. “Everyone is creating their own platforms — clients, agencies, partners — and we need to start with how all those platforms talk to each other. Otherwise, we’re going to look at business outcomes in silos,” Bast said. By leveraging a common platform to “look at MPI-level data, engagements, exposure data over time for a particular client and brand, we can put in place business roles that will help engage HCPs at that right moment. That’s where we can have better business outcomes, because we’re having better engagements with patients or with HCPs, they are able to write more and they’re able to have more meaningful conversations with their patients, which leads to better outcomes for the patients.”

The long-term value of targeted POC messaging lies in its ability to influence decisions at critical moments. “There are a lot of moving parts to every interaction that’s happening between an HCP and a patient,” Elawadhi said. “Bringing all the moving parts together at the same time is crucial to right POC marketing, as it sits at the bottom of the funnel, near the pivotal script-writing moment.”

In the past, POC marketing relied on “massive sales forces to get in front of more physicians,” Oliverio said. Now, it’s about leveraging technology. “All physicians are in EHR and that’s a natural place to be, but it’s not easy,” he explained. “There’s a lot of work you have to do before because if they get to the POC and you haven’t done all the right things, then it’s not going to work.”

Hypertargeting, specific messaging is essential for nudges to work, “but there is also a time and place for broad reach tactics,” Bast said. “It’s really about resetting the playing field for that particular disease and making sure that people are having that conversation. Let’s talk about it in broad and then we can get more targeted as we focus on POC.” This balance between targeted and broad strategies ensures that the right conversations happen at the right time, fostering better HCP-patient interactions with and better outcomes for patients.