Looking into physicians’ minds and hearts

Business Issue

A global health company developed an effective solution for a particularly challenging diagnosis. Yet in spite of communicating the medication’s impressive efficacy, a lower than expected number of physicians were frequent prescribers.

Our recommendation was to:

1. explore the physicians as “whole people” with the goal of revealing the emotional and rational drivers behind prescribing, and
2. use this understanding to develop a communication strategy and messaging that would connect with health care providers on both levels.

What We Did

Because physicians spend most of their time using the left side of the brain, it can be difficult for them to identify and articulate the emotions that drive treatment decisions. We used Evoke™, our proprietary, visually-based approach to revealing emotion, to explore how they felt when engaging with patients who have a specific diagnosis.

We conducted interviews using Evoke to explore key differences between “high” and “low” prescribers of the medication, including humanistic aspects such as what drew them into practicing medicine and treating this particular medical condition.

Result

Armed with this additional layer of insight, we pieced together a holistic picture of what both high and low prescribers considered cornerstones of good care. We also identified specific opportunities for reducing barriers and raising confidence for low prescribers to recommend the medication.

Today, our client is in the initial stages of using the logical and emotional insights we uncovered to recraft the strategy and messaging with low prescribers, both in terms of treatment efficacy, ease of prescribing and overall positive impact on patient and family lives.