PHARMACEUTICAL MARKETING and HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATIONS

This is not only our business at RiverSide Selection – it’s our life. 

But what is this industry that’s either referred to as Pharmaceutical Marketing, Healthcare Communications or PharmaComms? Simply put it’s the business of advertising or otherwise promoting the sale of pharmaceuticals or drugs, and raising awareness of healthcare issues. It's also becoming more and more about informing patients about their conditions, and helping them to effectively manage their condition through awareness campaigns. There is likely to be more and more need to speak directly to the general public about the benefits of complying with their therapy treatment, and the Pharmaceutical industry is starting to get to grips with the communications issues surrounding this.

The marketing of medication has a long history. The sale of miracle cures, many with little real potency, has been going on since the age of the cave man and the marketing of legitimate non-prescription medications such as pain relievers and allergy medicines has always been common. Mass marketing of prescription medications was rare until recently because doctors made the selection of the drugs that they were allowed by the NHS to prescribe, and therefore mass marketing was seen as a waste of marketing budget resources.

Doctors & other physicians are the most important players in pharmaceutical sales because they write the prescriptions that determine which drugs will be used on each patient, so influencing the prescription-writers is the key to a pharmaceutical company’s success. This process has historically been carried out by large pharmaceutical sales forces, some of which have grown to sizes of tens-of-thousands around the world.  Sales reps called upon doctors regularly, providing information and free drug samples to the prescription-writers, and this is still the approach today: however economic pressures on the industry are causing pharmaceutical companies to re-think the traditional route to the prescription-writers.

The pharmaceutical companies are using processes to influence the people who influence the doctors as well as the doctors themselves. These campaigns include channels such as self-influence through desk-based research i.e. the Internet; peer influence; direct interaction with pharmaceutical companies; patients and patient groups; and also insurance companies.

This is where our business kicks in because the people who implement these campaigns (or programmes as they are sometimes called) are the advertising or communications agencies. There are many different disciplines and spin-off disciplines involved in the healthcare communications process and we will attempt to describe them all here.