Medicx 101: Finding YOUR Target Patients
In the first installment of our Medicx 101 series, we explained how we use our data and insights to find your target healthcare professionals (HCPs). While targeting HCPs is an important step to creating brand awareness, the end beneficiary and user of the product is almost always the patient.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising among pharmaceutical companies increased from $2.1B in 1997 to $9.6B in 2016, marking a 78% increase in a span of 20 years. As budgets for DTC advertising among pharmaceutical companies continue to grow, so does the demand for efficient targeting. A study found that higher levels of DTC advertising efficiency showed significantly higher profitability as measured by return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE).
Targeting these patients effectively is more than just targeting all the areas where your patients are, it’s about knowing which areas will provide the most efficient results and focusing your strategy to those geographies. Medicx takes the guess work out of patient targeting, providing you with the most granular approach that is not only HIPAA compliant, but cost effective. By working with Medicx, you can develop a strategy to target patients that are ready for a change in therapy — those so-called patients “in play”.
Utilizing Real World Data
Unlike many targeting approaches that are based on look-alike models created from small sample sizes, Medicx bases its targeting on real-world data of over 240M adult patients. Our anonymized patient data encompasses over 90% of U.S. dispensed prescriptions and over 60% of US physician office and clinic medical claims, covering 6B+ claims annually which include physician diagnoses, in-office procedures and dispensed prescriptions. In addition to our anonymized claims data, Medicx’s self-identified data includes access to over 200M consumer expressed consent opt-ins, covering over 275 opt-in attributes.
As a pioneer in patient privacy, our data undergoes a regular risk re-identification determination assessment (RRID), performed by outside statistical experts, to certify the use of our anonymized real-world patient data for targeted advertising is in compliance with HIPAA. We are unique in having this statistical analysis and certification for targeting.
Medicx Micro-Neighborhood® Segmentation and Targeting Platform
Our patented, HIPAA-compliant Micro-Neighborhood® segmentation and targeting platform leverages our robust evidence-based data to provide the most efficient, privacy-safe way to reach your patients. We do this by profiling disease prevalence and other patient behaviors for nearly 35M hyperlocal areas in the U.S. Our privacy-by-design targeting approach ensures you focus your targeting efforts to only those hyperlocal areas of high evidence for your condition, eliminating unnecessary waste and improving targeting efficiency. Every audience we build is customized to a client’s specific needs to ensure we reach its target patients.
Our custom audiences are built by working with you to define your target patients and segments based on procedures, diagnosis, treatments, self-identified data, and any other relevant data. Through a deep understanding of medical billing codes and a brand’s commercial objectives, Medicx can develop audience definitions to get the valuable patients “in play” who are ready for a new therapy. We take your audience definitions to score and rank the hyperlocal areas across the U.S. and find and target only areas with high prevalence of your patients. This approach to audience segmentation allows you to reach more of your target patients while minimizing waste and providing a privacy-safe way of targeting.
Medicx Audience Segmentation In Practice
Reaching Late-Stage Patients
A pharma brand was looking to target a neurological condition. The objective of the campaign was to reach patients with precursor conditions to the one of interest.
The target audiences ranged from caregivers to patients being treated with specific doses of certain treatments more likely to be used in late-stage patients of the precursor condition. The biggest challenge was to identify advanced stage patients. As there is no specific ICD-10 for advanced stages, Medicx identified 5 condition stages of disease progression to help narrow the audience. To target those in an advanced stage, we focused identifying patients with symptoms that are presented in last two stages of the disease. By identifying hyperlocal areas with evidence of the precursor condition and evidence of the symptoms of the late stages, Medicx was able to identify 265K geographies with high prevalence of advanced-stage patients likely to have the neurological condition of interest and be ready for the brand of interest.
Driving Prescriptions Among Specific Audience Segments
A retail pharmacy chain was looking to target prescription fillers of a specific ethnic background. The goal of their campaign was to drive prescription volume among the target population at pharmacy locations in specific geographies.
As the population in the specified areas was large, Medicx leveraged its proprietary Micro-Neighborhood® targeting platform to identify the most relevant hyperlocal areas to target within those large geographies. We took evidence of our pharmacy claims to identify hyperlocal areas with a high volume of prescription data and cross-referenced those with our self-identified data for those in the indicated ethnic group to find prescription fillers within the group. Our methodology reduced the overall targeting area by 15%, thereby reducing unnecessary waste, to focus on those areas with a high evidence of the pharmacy chain’s target patients.
Targeting Diagnosed Patients Not on Therapy
A pharma brand wanted to target patients that had a condition but were not treated, with the objective to drive new patient starts among those patients. They were looking specifically for patients with a specific diagnosis, but who were not receiving prescription therapy for the condition.
By using both our medical and pharmacy claims data, we were able to develop audiences with the brand’s target patients. We did this by identifying hyperlocal areas where we see evidence of a diagnosis for the condition but no evidence of treatment. We then scored and ranked these hyperlocal areas to identify those with high prevalence of those patients. Through this audience segmentation, we were able to identify over 170K hyperlocal areas within their requested DMAs.
By combining the power of our evidence-based data with the precision of our Micro-Neighborhood® segmentation and targeting platform, Medicx is able to identify the patients that brands are looking for, when they are ready to make treatment decision.
Be on the lookout for the next part of our Medicx 101 series, where we show how we utilize our targeting channels to deliver your brand’s message to your target HCP audience.