Physicians repeatedly access point-of-care information, often five
to 10 times a day or more, mainly to determine what product in a drug
class is covered by a particular patient’s managed care formulary.
If we could observe what information was being looked up and in what
sequence by significant numbers of physicians, it could be argued
that we would be able to learn a significant amount about the salience
of various drugs to physicians, the aspects of individual drugs on
which they are focused, the drugs physicians are looking at comparatively,
etc.
A source of such data could be made available to the pharmaceutical
marketing research community, and we believe it is important to become
familiar with these data, their applications, limitations, etc., to
make sure that if and when released, these data will provide maximum
value to the pharmaceutical companies that purchase them. In this
month’s published document for The Orange Pages, we
examine this potential new source of information, which would result
from reorganizing data derived from the well-known and respected Epocrates
software system for PDAs, and how we, as pharmaceutical marketing
researchers, can best learn to use this information in our work.
To download the complete November 2007 discussion on learning from
physicians’ searches for point-of-care information, please click
here.
The monthly issue-based discussions that we publish in this newsletter
can also be distributed to you in hardcopy format via a complimentary
subscription-based resource we publish for our clients called The
Orange Pages. The Orange Pages is intended to serve
as a living, breathing resource of “Information, Education and
Issues Exploration for Today’s Pharmaceutical Marketing Researcher”
that we hope will be read with interest and kept within reach for
ongoing reference.
The format is a three-ring binder designed to hold packets of content
that we will develop and distribute on a variety of topics. Content
packets will come to you in an easy to identify (and appropriately
colored) orange envelope and be delivered on a monthly basis. The
materials will be three-hole punched for convenient one-click assembly
into your binder.
If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of The Orange
Pages binder, and get on our distribution list for monthly addendums,
please fill out the form below.
