Five Ways Advanced Social Intelligence Guides Pharma Strategy

Within the billions of daily comments from individuals across open social sources lies deep intelligence into markets, brands, patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and competitors. Several leading pharmaceutical companies are already using big data solutions to extract insights from the social realm. Applying these insights across a number of business functions empowers their decision-making with strategic understanding that digs deeper than ever before possible.

Today, social intelligence has advanced well beyond cursory “buzz” via narrow keyword monitoring. The tandem of big data processing and complex concept modeling delivers deep, powerful views into markets, patients, brands and competitors.

Here are five ways pharmaceuticals are currently leveraging advanced social intelligence to drive strategic decisions:

Patient Personification

Today, with millions of patients sharing their health experiences online across social networks and open source channels, the ability to truly understand the needs of the patient has never been greater.

In fact, social intelligence allows pharma to segment and personify patients at multidimensional levels to enhance a brand’s reach, messaging and education for increased awareness, compliance and ultimately, outcomes. Using these tools, comprehensive patient personas can be constructed to personify patents, leading to a better understanding of patient needs, their decision-making process and their actions.

Patient Journey

The concept of the patient journey has received growing attention in recent years. But social intelligence has transformed the patient journey from concept to reality by constructing the actual path patients take based on their own symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, decisions and experiences.

This offers pharmaceutical and health providers a detailed understanding of crucial (demand?) moments and decision points for patients.

Competitive Insight

Another powerful aspect of advanced social intelligence is that pharma can leverage it to gain deep insights on competing products to better understand the attitudes, behaviors, decisions, actions and perceptions patients have related to the competition.

Comparative analysis is also commonly conducted to reveal the drivers and decisions behind patient switching to and from a provider’s treatment and a competing brand.

Launch Tracking

An increasing number of pharmaceutical companies are conducting ‘milestone monitoring’ for treatment launches in preparation for, during and after the brand’s launch. This real-time launch tracking focuses on the discussions about a new drug and its competitors by a variety of segments, including patients and caregivers, healthcare providers, financial markets, media, influencers, regulators and competitors.

The tracking also provides a deep inspection of

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the market over longer monitoring periods, to understand the impact the brand has on the overall market and individual patients.

Influencer Analysis

Several pharmaceuticals are focusing on understanding the motivation, tactics and impact influencers have on their patients, markets, and specifically their brands. These companies are turning to advanced social intelligence to map out the apparent and hidden networks and relationships of these influencers to strategically plan how to engage or counter their initiatives.

On this front, influencers can be advocates and evangelists or activists and ax-grinders, focused on helping or hurting their brands, respectively. Pharma is realizing that understanding these unique influencers and the impact they have on their markets and business are critical to driving the success of their brands.

An Intelligent Impact

It’s never been more critical for the healthcare industry to personify and understand patients on multidimensional levels with respect to their needs, concerns, decisions, behaviors, attitudes, activities and compliance issues. Today, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies are realizing that achieving this is possible on an immediate and actionable level with advanced social insight by extracting the powerful knowledge held within billions of daily comments from tens of millions of individuals across millions of social sources.

The key is identifying a tool that approaches social discussions with a big data solution rather than one with samples of the social universe. This approach allows providers to get a rich, holistic view of their patients, their caregivers and healthcare providers, as well as the influencers, analysts, media and competitors impacting their markets and brands.

Mark Langsfeld is Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, ListenLogic Health. He can be reached at ml@listenlogic.com.