Opinion

Pharma companies moving digital mainstream

Pharma companies moving digital mainstream

Across Health’s annual digital survey has recently been published. The study pointed out that most pharma staff still find it challenging to extremely challenging to adopt digital in their organization. Main bottlenecks remain regulatory issues, lack of digital strategy, and questions about the ROI of digital initiatives.

Interestingly, this year the lack of internal knowledge around digital in pharma companies has become significantly more important. This hints that companies are looking to really embed digital in their organizations. More talents, more skills, and more processes will be needed to make this step towards moving digital mainstream.

Mobile marketing and tablet detailing heavily piloted

Of all channels, the most piloted ones currently are mobile marketing and tablet detailing. While last year online detailing pilots were leading the pack, this year it moved slightly more mainstream. Next to this also more and more companies are experimenting with online medical education.

Pharma companies still underspending on digital

Despite the progess, pharma marketers are still only spending about 7-8% of their marketing budgets on digital, or only about 1-2% of the total sales-marketing budget. Of the 21 digital channels that Across Health has mapped in this survey, most of the efforts are still going to company, product and disease websites. Consequently also only about 13% of pharma executives are satisfied with their current digital initiatives.

For more information on the status of digital in pharma, find the results of the survey at http://slidesha.re/mtgtBT

Fonny Schenck
CEO, Across Health
http://www.a-cross.com/health