Hello there, this is Dr. Eugenia Jones looking at biotechnology and medical device marketing for the Technology Marketing Center. When I first went for training in healthcare marketing I was already working in industry and although the courses were well taught there was something that just didn't resonant. It took me a while to figure out what was missing.
The healthcare industry is comprised of several sectors, including pharmaceutics, medical devices and diagnostics. These sectors are subject to similar governmental regulations, which shapes our marketing efforts and launch plans, but there are significant differences. Healthcare marketing courses rely heavily on pharmaceutical examples, leaving students like me with the impression that the marketing techniques being taught apply across all sectors in the industry. But I knew looking around at other device and diagnostic marketing that this wasn't case and I wondered what made pharma marketing different from devices and diagnostics.
It turns out the difference is fundamental, easily overlooked, and yet should sculpt every element of a medical diagnostic and device marketing efforts. Unlike pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics and devices can be continually improved to address unmet needs that arise over time. It bears repeating. A pharmaceutic, a drug, has a defined set characteristics, and rarely can be "improved." You can alter the delivery vehicles, and occasionally package it with another drug to improve performance, but that is it.
Take a moment. Imagine you have two products with similar development costs and patent protection but the only way to extend patent protection, one of your key competitive advantages, for one product is to find a use for childhood illness which gets you a couple of extra years, while the other product can be continually reengineered, improved to adapt to the prevailing needs of a segment, e.g. high throughput automation versus point of care diagnostics. Would your marketing approach be the same for both types of products, after all you’re selling to the same population, doctor’s and patients? Would you manage your brand and the types of products you launch differently? I sure do.
One of the great advantages of being in medical diagnostics and devices is that I can apply the best practices from pharmaceutical marketing I learned in healthcare marketing course, e,g, how to leverage opinion leaders at launch to drive adoption and market penetration, and meld those with the best practices from other technology marketing sectors. In reality in the pharmaceutical industry it is very difficult to launch a real line extension, as opposed to virtual line extension e.g. Nexium and Prilosec. In the device or diagnostic sectors product line extensions are the norm, allowing businesses to address the unmet needs of a particular segment without sacrificing other segments. This fundamental difference should significantly impact how you approach customers and how you devise a marketing plan.
Not all is lost from taking healthcare marketing courses. Pharmaceutical marketing efforts excel at translating clinical trial data into actionable physicians drivers. In addition Pharma marketers have excelled in direct to consumer marketing, a path very few medical devices have undertaken, with the exception of diabetes diagnostic supplies. I have no experience with direct to consumer marketing, and would like to learn how to ethically use this channel to drive adoption and sales of some the amazing diagnostic products it has been my privilege to work on. But I wonder, how to ethically market diagnostic and medical devices directly to consumers? What do you think and what lessons would take away from Pharma's direct to consumer marketing efforts?
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