Healthcare 2028: The Strategic Role of Brand Marketing in Personalized Medicine
Between now and 2028, medicines coming to market are forecasted to grow substantially, with up to 270 new brands expected. Representing years of scientific advancements and investment, these new therapeutics, vaccines, and cures are bringing hope to patients with cancer, compromised immune systems, cardiovascular conditions, and rare diseases.
At the same time, many industries are focused on improving customer centricity and satisfaction through brand experiences that are more personal. This is in response to heightened consumer demands for interactions that are not just higher quality but very relevant to their needs and delivered via their preferred channels.
This convergence of advanced medicine and raised consumer expectations is pushing brand marketers to innovate in how they engage with HCPs and patients. Successful brands will be the ones that consistently deliver consumer-grade experiences, ensuring HCPs and patients are well-informed at critical moments along the care journey. The results will be what the healthcare industry strives for: improved patient-provider dialogues, optimal clinical decision making, and ultimately better overall patient outcomes.
Raised Expectations for Brand Marketing
The proliferation of new precision therapies, especially in oncology, immunology, and even obesity management, presents a daunting array of potential treatment options, each with its own clinical and safety resources. For instance, 18 new cancer medicines were introduced just last year and about 100 more oncologics are expected for approval over the next four years.1 As therapies become more specialized and complex, brand marketers have an obligation to help providers and patients better navigate available information.
But sharing information about medicines through different channels at standard intervals is no longer sufficient. Audiences expect brand interactions to be more human and attuned to their information needs. For instance, 25% of HCPs surveyed by IQVIA stated that keeping current with the latest advancements in care was among the main challenges to making optimal care choices within their practice, second only to managing insurance issues and formularies.2
Today, there is considerable room for improvement in how healthcare brands communicate with their audiences. According to research conducted by IQVIA, only 20% of patient and HCP respondents said they rely on brand websites—a brand’s primary digital hub—for information relevant to clinical decision making. This medium ranked significantly lower than other sources, such as independent third-party content sites and peer-reviewed studies.3
Increasing the impact of marketing strategies requires a deeper understanding of audience preferences and behaviors, the ability to engage with those audiences across all channels, and analytical tools to measure communication effectiveness and make agile adjustments.
Data and Technology Accelerate Marketing Impact
Healthcare marketers now must expand beyond basic data-driven approaches by applying insight-led actions to address the pain points of HCPs and patients. Innovations in technology and the ways in which data is used are helping to revolutionize brand engagement. Real-time insights into HCP and patient behaviors fuel omnichannel programs with personalization at scale and dynamic refinement.
Delivering more human interactions starts with speed to insight: the rapid collection and analysis of data from various touchpoints, including digital interactions, field force engagements, and customer feedback. Swift data analytics help marketers gain real-time insights into customer preferences to drive engagement strategies.
The next crucial element is speed to action: the ability to quickly adjust medical and promotional activities using these insights and engage when customers need to receive specific information via the channels they prefer.
The other key factor is speed to measurement: since HCP knowledge and patient requirements can change rapidly, measuring performance and course correcting swiftly can be the difference between a successful campaign and a missed opportunity.
The Future of Brand Marketing Starts Now
The intersection of specialized medicine and strategic brand marketing represents a major opportunity in life sciences and healthcare to humanize interactions at scale and close education gaps. Now is the time for brand marketers to lead this transformation using technologies, data-driven insights, and domain expertise.
Delivering a positive experience requires matching the most influential message to the moment when an HCP or patient has an information need—and measuring the effectiveness of that personalized interaction. Successful brands will know whom to engage with as well as what content they are seeking, and then deliver the desired content in the preferred format.
When brands innovate digital marketing to address the growing rates of care complexity and specialization, audiences can make informed clinical decisions more quickly about treatment options that improve health outcomes.
Hear more about how marketing can and should play a strategic role alongside advancements in specialized medicine: watch our keynote from Digital Pharma East.
- IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. The Use of Medicines in the U.S. 2024: Usage and Spending Trends and Outlook to 2028. April 2024.
- IQVIA Healthcare Network Custom Survey, August 2024; Q7: Rank the challenges from 1 to 4, (where 1 is the most challenging and 2 is the second most challenging, etc.) you encounter in prescribing products in your practice?
- IQVIA Healthcare Network Custom Survey, August 2024; Q4: What sources do you rely on for information about disease states or pharmaceutical products?
