For Life Sciences companies, the journey towards innovation and improved patient care hinges on understanding the pulse of our digital age. Social Media Analytics has emerged as an important tool for Pharmaceutical and MedTech companies to better understand physician and patient needs.
Today, we take a closer look at the profound influence of Social Media Analytics and Social Media Listening in the Life Sciences arena. This is why we have invited Sahil Singla, Founder at PharmaScroll, for an interview.
Karsten:
Thank you for taking the time for this interview, Sahil. There are many different areas where Social Media Analytics can be applied in Life Sciences. In which areas have you seen the highest increase in demand lately?
Sahil:
Thank you, Karsten for inviting me for this discussion. Social Media Analytics is an exciting space right now in Life Sciences industry. It finds its application across the value chain and across the life cycle stages. It is utilized in the commercial space, clinical space and to understand the payer perspective by the pharmaceutical manufacturers. Commercial managers and leaders are utilizing social listening to better prepare for the launches and to track the qualitative and quantitative metrics related to the brand and the disease in general. Clinical managers are utilizing social listening to understand the impact of clinical outcomes among patients and physicians and hence decide on primary and secondary end points related to the trial. Medical managers are also actively employing social media analytics for Pharmacovigilance. Social Media Analytics has also emerged as a key tool in understanding the payer landscape and the impact of pricing and corresponding sentiments among patients and physicians.
Karsten:
At what stages of the product life cycle do you find it strategically most advantageous to invest in Social Media Analytics?
Sahil:
Social Media Analytics can be utilized across the life cycle stages of the drugs. In the preclinical and discovery phases Social Listening can be explored to understand the potential trial end points and testing the Target Product Profiles of the products. During the early clinical trial phases Social Listening can assist in understanding the disease landscape and unmet needs in the market. Closer to the launch the Social Media Analytics can help in launch prep by informing about competition and understanding patient and physician lexicons which can be further utilized to create brand positioning. Post launch Social Listening can inform brand perceptions, awareness and performance of the brands. Hence, Social Media Analytics has applications across the wide spectrum providing key medical and commercial insights.
Illustration: Social Medial Listen at different product life cycle stages
Karsten:
Would you be able to share an example where Social Media Analytics generate insights to significantly improve HCP or patient journeys?
Sahil:
Social Media Analytics can provide key clinical and commercial insights for various stakeholders including patients, physicians and access players. For patients, Social Media Analytics can help understand patient unmet needs, and gaps from existing drugs thereby enabling the drug manufacturers to bridge these gaps from efficacy and safety perspective thereby ensuring enhanced patient outcomes. For physicians social listening can inform key patient queries and concerns which can further enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to design communication and HCP support programs to assist them in improved patient deliveries. An example can be if patients are highlighting extended wait times at HCP clinics as one of their concern area, drug manufacturers can support HCPs with programs to ensure reduced wait times at clinics and improving efficiencies.
Karsten:
What are current regulatory challenges faced by the industry in the context of Social Media Analytics for pharmacovigilance and compliance monitoring and how can those be overcome?
Sahil:
Most primary researches conducted with patients need to be regulatory compliant and ensure that patient information is not revealed and the adverse events are reported on time. For this most of the social media analytics partners ensure that the information collected from Social Listening channels are anonymized and every side effect or adverse event encountered during listening is captured and reported to the regulatory authorities in a 24 hour timeframe.
Karsten:
What are technical ways to tap into the plethora of patient and HCP conversations that are happening on social media platforms and how can signal be separated from noise in these conversations?
Sahil:
We typically employ multiple automated algorithms using AI/ML technologies to capture raw conversations from various patient and HCP forums and social media channels. These automated algorithms extract information using a detailed medical ontology which is a structured way of organizing information to represent the semantics, meaning and relationships of various terms. The algorithms then also ensure that the information is captured and insights are reported real time. We utilize strong noise reduction algorithms by using various inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure that the noise such as promotional conversations or irrelevant conversations are removed from the relevant information. The use to technology ensures that we can capture real time information without any limit from the number of conversations perspective. Also, the qualitative insights to be generated can be automated from a large set of conversations volume, using complex Natural Language Processing algorithms. This reduces the dependency on human intervention to capture insights from raw conversations and enables us to process millions of records in a short span of time.
Karsten:
In which cases does it make sense to build Social Media Analytics dashboards for real-time monitoring and what type of Key Performance Indicators are normally defined?
Sahil:
In case a brand is launched in the market or is about to be launched, it makes a lot of sense to employ regular social media monitoring. Various launch or performance metrics can be included in such dashboards. Quantitative metrics such as number of conversations and sentiments vs competition inform your awareness levels in the market. Also, it is important to note the key stakeholders who are having these conversations so that you can identify potential KOLs for your brand and the key influencers. Qualitative KPIs such as top symptoms, top triggers, lexicons from patients and physicians inform on the positioning messages for the brands. Commercial insights related to brand perceptions on safety and efficacy attributes inform on the performance of the brand vs the competition. Also, social listening can be utilized to find out the switch behaviours so that a pharmaceutical manufacturer can explore potential business opportunities and minimise business loss. Finally tracking a real time patient journey is always helpful for the drug manufacturers to make key commercial decisions.
Karsten:
Would you be able to share an example where Social Media Analytics generates insights to significantly improve HCP or patient journeys?
Sahil:
Social Media Analytics can provide key clinical and commercial insights for various stakeholders including patients, physicians and access players. For patients, Social Media Analytics can help understand patient unmet needs, and gaps from existing drugs thereby enabling the drug manufacturers to bridge these gaps from efficacy and safety perspective thereby ensuring enhanced patient outcomes. For physicians social listening can inform key patient queries and concerns which can further enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to design communication and HCP support programs to assist them in improved patient deliveries. An example can be if patients are highlighting extended wait times at HCP clinics as one of their concern area, drug manufacturers can support HCPs with programs to ensure reduced wait times at clinics and improving efficiencies.
Karsten:
What are current regulatory challenges faced by the industry in the context of Social Media Analytics for pharmacovigilance and compliance monitoring and how can those be overcome?
Sahil:
Most primary researches conducted with patients need to be regulatory compliant and ensure that patient information is not revealed and the adverse events are reported on time. For this most of the social media analytics partners ensure that the information collected from Social Listening channels are anonymized and every side effect or adverse event encountered during listening is captured and reported to the regulatory authorities in a 24 hour timeframe.
Karsten:
What are technical ways to tap into the plethora of patient and HCP conversations that are happening on social media platforms and how can signal be separated from noise in these conversations?
Sahil:
We typically employ multiple automated algorithms using AI/ML technologies to capture raw conversations from various patient and HCP forums and social media channels. These automated algorithms extract information using a detailed medical ontology which is a structured way of organizing information to represent the semantics, meaning and relationships of various terms. The algorithms then also ensure that the information is captured and insights are reported real time. We utilize strong noise reduction algorithms by using various inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure that the noise such as promotional conversations or irrelevant conversations are removed from the relevant information. The use to technology ensures that we can capture real time information without any limit from the number of conversations perspective. Also, the qualitative insights to be generated can be automated from a large set of conversations volume, using complex Natural Language Processing algorithms. This reduces the dependency on human intervention to capture insights from raw conversations and enables us to process millions of records in a short span of time.
Karsten:
In which cases does it make sense to build Social Media Analytics dashboards for real-time monitoring and what type of Key Performance Indicators are normally defined?
Sahil:
In case a brand is launched in the market or is about to be launched, it makes a lot of sense to employ regular social media monitoring. Various launch or performance metrics can be included in such dashboards. Quantitative metrics such as number of conversations and sentiments vs competition inform your awareness levels in the market. Also, it is important to note the key stakeholders who are having these conversations so that you can identify potential KOLs for your brand and the key influencers. Qualitative KPIs such as top symptoms, top triggers, lexicons from patients and physicians inform on the positioning messages for the brands. Commercial insights related to brand perceptions on safety and efficacy attributes inform on the performance of the brand vs the competition. Also, social listening can be utilized to find out the switch behaviours so that a pharmaceutical manufacturer can explore potential business opportunities and minimise business loss. Finally tracking a real time patient journey is always helpful for the drug manufacturers to make key commercial decisions.
Illustration of Patient Journey Snapshots
To conclude, Social Media Analytics has emerged as a powerful tool to track the standard metrics such as brand perceptions and performance which was traditionally done using primary market research, a costly channel leading to biases due to lower sample size.
Karsten:
How can the use of Social Media Analytics become a competitive advantage in specific therapeutic areas like for example the rare disease space?
Sahil:
Rare diseases involve a very limited patient base which can be hard to find and talk to using conventional primary research channels. Utilizing targeted keywords to identify patient conversations in rare disease segments and tapping into specific patient forums focused on those can help in unlocking key clinical and commercial insights. Furthermore, by engaging in social listening, a pharmaceutical company can access a wealth of patient discussions, thus enabling the generation of insightful data that is not constrained by a small sample size and remains consistent over time. Actually, in case of rare diseases, it makes all the more sense to conduct social listening for an extended period of time to understand patient behaviour.
Karsten:
Thank you, Sahil, for sharing your valuable insights on the impact of Social Media Analytics in the Life Sciences industry. You have helped us shed some light how tools in this space can shape innovation, patient care, and competitiveness, making it an essential discussion for our audience in the Life Sciences sector.
In summary, Social Media Analytics is a vital asset for Life Sciences companies, spanning the commercial, clinical, and payer aspects. By delving into patient and healthcare provider (HCP) journeys, it elevates patient outcomes and bolsters physician support. Its automated algorithms and advanced noise reduction techniques enable the efficient real-time processing of extensive social media conversations. This tool not only allows for a profound understanding of brand perceptions and performance but also offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional and expensive primary market research methods.
Xeleratio Consulting GmbH
We help Life Sciences executives improve sales performance with innovative best-in-class Business Excellence tools and methodologies . Expertise in Business Excellence has been gained with over 12 years of working in different global and regional roles in the Life Sciences industry.
Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss this or any other topics related to Commercial Excellence. See all articles on Xeleratio Consulting Blog
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