Effectively engaging with a variety of healthcare stakeholders is key to the commercial success of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. Among them, there is one stakeholder group that is considered more important – HCPs.
Healthcare professionals or HCPs include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals, and are the ones who make decisions relating to prescribing medication and patient care. So, it’s crucial for biotech and medical device companies to build positive relationships with HCPs that will ultimately drive drug and medical device sales.
Here are 5 reasons why HCPs are such an important audience:
1) Prescribing power
Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are the ones who ultimately decide which patients get prescribed what, so gaining their support is essential in driving drug usage.
Once HCPs trust the efficacy and safety of your treatment or device, they become more likely to recommend it to their patients, which in turn increases adoption and prescription rates.
2) Valuable source of insight
HCPs possess in-depth medical knowledge so are best placed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a drug.
They are also very much at the frontline of healthcare delivery so they are very familiar with the challenges that patients face every day, living with illness.
So, HCPs are a valuable source of expert feedback, which can help biotech companies improve or enhance existing therapies and devices, or develop future drugs that better meet the needs of patients.
3) HCPs play a major role in patient education
HCPs play an important part in raising awareness and educating their patients about the different treatment options available, including the benefits, risks, and potential side effects of medication.
In addition, patients still regard HCPs as the most trusted source of information so doctors have a considerable impact on their willingness to adhere to medication.
So, it’s crucial that you provide detailed educational materials and information, such as dosage, active ingredients, treatment adherence, methods of administering the drug, and clinical data on efficacy and safety. Providing additional educational content for HCPs to pass on to patients is also useful.
More importantly, you need to make sure that you give HCPs all the information they need to address any concerns or questions they may have in prescribing your therapy. Addressing these concerns encourages them to adopt your treatment.
4) HCPs’ role as intermediaries
A healthcare system’s main concern is always the welfare and safety of the patient. So, health authorities expect physicians to act as intermediaries between the pharma or biotech company, and ultimately, the patient.
And as an intermediary, their role is to ensure that drugs are prescribed, administered, and monitored according to regulatory and ethical standards. More specifically, this role requires HCPs to:
- Ensure medicines are used appropriately, and prevent them from being misused
- Constantly monitor drug safety, reporting adverse events and complications
- Make prescribing decisions based on treatment guidelines, scientific evidence, and patient needs
- Ensure patient welfare comes first, not commercial interests
In light of these responsibilities and the stringent regulations that exist, you, as a biotech company need to make sure that treatments are developed, manufactured, and marketed ethically. This is essential in gaining the trust of HCPs.
5) Strong market influence
Since patients see their doctors as a trusted source of information, they exert a strong influence on prescribing habits. In turn, this can fuel demand for specific therapies and devices, and have a major impact on a biotech company’s market share and sales.
HCPs can also help raise awareness and market a drug by speaking at medical conferences and writing articles about it.
According to a 2024 NHS England survey, 63% of patients said that they have trust and confidence in their doctor. This means that HCPs are still a strong driver in the adoption of treatments and devices.
So, as a biotech or medical device company, you need to go beyond communicating marketing messages. You need to engage with them effectively by providing them with clinical evidence that makes a strong case for your therapy or device, and valuable information and tools that help them care for their patients. This way, you increase the chances of successfully promoting and selling your treatment or technology.