The Evolution of Media in Medical Education: Introducing HSS Viewpoint

More than ever, physician time is at a premium. Heavy patient loads, paperwork, research, presentations at medical meetings, and department/academic obligations make it tough to keep up with the literature, new therapies, and understanding of how community level and peers manage their patients. The delivery of medical education has changed and continues to evolve as new technology is developed and becomes more mainstream. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are changing their habits accordingly.

Where clinicians once received information primarily from books, journals, and peers, HCPs today rely heavily on the digital delivery of new information. The pandemic has also disrupted how HCPs interact with their colleagues and pharma in sharing information. Where once pharma relied on reps and medical science liaisons (MSLs) to engage clinicians, many digital interactions, such as video conferencing, have replaced the need for in-person meetings. Similarly, the live meeting space is still figuring out how to maintain a level of immediacy and dissemination of new data and how much clinicians are willing to take time out of their offices to attend live congresses.

Knowing What HCPs Want

Healio Strategic Solutions (HSS) is part of the Wyanoke Group of companies which was established nearly 100 years ago as a family-run company serving the needs of HCPs by providing medical education via textbooks and journals. The company has grown to include live meetings, news, and deep engagement models, evolving right along with the behavior of clinicians. Being in the medical education business for as long as it has, clinicians recognize the company as a trusted source to return to and consume medical information.

Today’s HCPs are not very different from the way everyone wants to receive information—quickly. With the wealth of digital information, HCPs also want the ability to access medical education in bite-size bits, be entertained, interact with content, and know what their peers think. Today’s generation of HCPs are multitaskers. That’s one reason why podcasts are so popular—they can be listened to while on the go, whenever the HCPs want, and on their preferred device.

Medical Industry Blogging

Medical blogs have become popular and serve as a platform to share stories, insights, and best practices in the medical world. We will be introducing HSS Viewpoint in September 2022 to facilitate dialogue and fill in the gap when one-on-one conversations fall short.

“The fundamental goal of HSS Viewpoint is to create valuable and targeted content for our audiences, professionals in the fields of medical communications, medical education, life sciences, and the pharmaceutical industry. Blogging is the perfect way to forge trust, reach a wider audience, and build community. People trust written words and HSS Viewpoint will only improve the level of trust toward Healio Strategic Solutions,” said Thomas M. Cavallaro VP, Creative Marketing, Healio Strategic Solutions.

Viewpoint will leverage the vast digital, print, and live event HCP network to which HSS is aligned. Platforms like those established by HSS, that use analytics to identify physician-level data to track the success of a deep engagement educational model, provide insight into digital clinician behavior. Key performance indicators of successful blogs might typically include count visits, unique visitors, and time on the site, but having that audience return year after year is golden. Forging a connection between industry and the medical community in a continuously evolving media environment provides another way to get a better understanding of the challenges in the medical community and the hot topics both medical professionals and industry face.

Fun and Educational Medical Content

Taryn Riggs, Marketing Strategist at HSS, is spearheading the HSS blog and analyzing where to best maximize HSS articles on social media. Her background in developing content and strategies, creating brand identities, and expanding digital marketing efforts for higher education organizations makes her a great asset. As a millennial, she knows how her generation, whether medical personnel or others, utilizes social media. HSS research has also verified that younger physicians particularly embrace social media information and appreciate informative messages that don’t take long to read.

As Taryn and the team understand, persuasive writing needs to be honest and captivate the reader’s attention. One must choose words carefully. Younger people are drawn to venues such as TikTok because they can be interesting and fun. They can also be educational. Another thing to keep in mind is that the medical community has typically been slow to adapt to change. False medical claims, whether true or perceived, can have long-standing implications for the continued success of a brand. Thus, it is critical to provide factual information from trusted sources. “With the advent of more educational messaging on blogs and social media, we are seeing how serious messages can be communicated effectively with humor and warmth, while still translating necessary medical and legal information,” Riggs shared.

Since the advent of social media in pharma advertising and education, and packing the biggest message in word count minimums rife with acronyms and abbreviations, we recognize that this is a changing and potentially volatile field. Sites that offer insights help fill a gap in HCP dialogue and provide an opportunity to better connect to marketers who need to stay up to date with trends in the medical community that affect patient care.

  • Adrienne Stevens, EdD, MBA

    Adrienne Stevens, EdD, MBA is Vice President, Head of Scientific Strategy at Healio Strategic Solutions. Over the course of her diverse career, Adrienne has been recognized as an innovative team leader in Medical Affairs and in medical education. Adrienne is committed to advancing medical excellence and alliances for ongoing competitive advantage with creativity and passion.

Ads

You May Also Like

PM360 2022 Innovative Strategy Commercial Acceleration from Rebound

Commercial Acceleration Rebound Contact Person: Meridith Rohrbaugh, Founder and CEO mrohrbaugh@reboundcommunications.com Rapidly growing SaaS ...

Commercial Innovation: Still a Remote Archipelago

For several years now, every life sciences company has been chasing innovation in their ...

The Online Reputation of Cymbalta

Last month, we started our series on the online reputations of the top 10 ...