BST could prove a boon to Medical Affairs
Just because an intervention works doesn’t mean it will be adopted into clinical practice, but pharma Medical Affairs teams still tend to focus on hard evidence to encourage the uptake of new drugs. Ben Routley of Bioscript/Mark Pringle of NeoHealthHub show how behavioural science techniques (BST) could help client communications have a greater impact.
Many industries use behavioural science as part of their sales and marketing strategy. Convincing customers of the benefits of one brand over another doesn’t just mean citing statistics about the item’s efficacy: you also need to engage customers’ emotions to make them ‘buy into’ the new offering and engage both the rational and emotional sides of their brain.
‘Confirmation bias’ – where people read into something what they expect to see or hear – or ‘status quo bias’ (inertia) can play an important part in determining outcomes. Behavioural science can help to challenge these subliminal decision influencers.
Getting people to cement a decision and make a change requires lateral thinking – just as it has during the pandemic. In the UK, government bodies and public services have sought personal commitment from citizens to engage in considerate, risk-reducing behaviour. But simply citing the science, however powerful, proved to be only moderately effective in securing public buy-in to safe practices, so officials had to supplement the hard science with more emotive and ‘human’ messaging that talked about protecting loved ones, and everyone ‘doing their bit’ to accelerate the return to normality.
This high-profile application of ‘behavioural science’ has proved thought-provoking right across the healthcare ecosystem, and the discipline’s potential is now subject to fresh investigation by certain sections of the pharma industry – particularly in Medical Affairs.
Over the past five years, Medical Affairs – which provides the bridge between the pharma industry and the wider medical community – has seen its role in the development and commercialisation of products expand as treatments become more complex and their paths to market become more complicated.
The shift to more advanced treatments such as gene or stem cell therapies means that there is now a lot more to communicate if we are to build understanding and realise their potential. And it is here that behavioural science techniques (BST) offer a pragmatic solution to modern medical communications challenges, particularly where the proposition is very different from its predecessors.
For many years, Medical Affairs in forward-thinking life science companies has been evolving towards something much more strategic than a once-simple drug launch process, with a greater emphasis on tailored messaging to different stakeholders and segments. However, messaging alone does not change behaviour, particularly in more cautious prescribers or those treating more complex patients.
As treatments become more specialised and targeted, the ability to communicate their benefits in the most effective way is more critical than ever. Integrating behavioural science into medical communications is about going beyond targeted messaging to address the motivations and inherent biases that shape clinical decision-making.
Typically, scientific (rational) information around efficacy and safety has been communicated at length in a bid to convince physicians that rationally, product A is better than product B. However, we know that people don’t always interpret information rationally and therefore don’t make optimal decisions. Psychological, cognitive, emotional and cultural factors also all influence decision-making. In the context of prescribing, HCPs’ behavioural influencers may include: positive experiences with existing treatment options, lack of clarity regarding how to best manage adverse events, and accepted expectations toward patient outcomes. Therefore communication around these issues can be key.
The recent absence of face-to-face congresses, where data would be interpreted among peers, also means that Medical Affairs teams need to go further to help translate the science by leveraging alternative means of communicating. For clinicians, the opportunity for Medical Affairs teams may be to recreate peer networking opportunities on a smaller scale, delving into the science beneath the headline data and giving physicians a chance to think through a new therapy’s relevance to their own patients. Our experience has shown that combining simple data communication with practical support allows reflective and considered analysis, enabling audiences to make more informed decisions on the balance of risk and benefit. This approach not only provides a platform for authentic scientific exchange but also brings rich insights into further behavioural drivers and gaps in the evidence package.
Up to now, the uptake of BST in life sciences has been relatively muted, despite growing acceptance that applied behavioural science can bridge the gap between knowledge and implementation, i.e. between accepting that something is the case and doing something about it. But as the pharma industry wakes up to the potential – and clear need – for a BST approach to medical communications, there is an opportunity for early movers to gain an advantage while the practice is still relatively under-utilised.
On the other hand, failing to capitalise on this potential could represent a lost opportunity - and that’s something that few pharma companies can afford.