As healthcare marketing continues to evolve, Point-of-Care (POC) strategies are becoming increasingly vital in shaping treatment decisions and supporting both patients and providers at critical moments. In this excerpt for PM360's Think Tank segment, Lisa Prowker, SVP of Messaging Ops at ConnectiveRx, explored the role of POC marketing in influencing patient behavior, building trust through unbiased educational materials, and supporting onboarding and adherence. Here's what Lisa had to say:

In the sacred one-to-one space between providers and their patients, pharma companies have an opportunity to provide supportive clinical information, such as dosing recommendations, clinical evidence that the branded drug is more effective than a generic, and the types of available patient support or offers of cost savings and coupons. The focus of pharma’s messaging at point of care should be on giving information that helps a patient and provider succeed in moving forward confidently with their prescribed treatment.

When you’ve got a successful television ad showing people frolicking through a forest in order to sell a medication, brand teams may take that imagery, put it in a banner ad, and leverage it across different channels. That may be fine for building brand recognition, but in a POC setting staying clinically appropriate by focusing on relevant content and a call to action over heavy branding delivers a message that carries far more weight.

But HCPs don’t want to be bombarded with the same imagery and taglines they’ve seen many times over on TV or social media; they want information delivered in their existing workflow that will support them and their patients. The more brands can think about that setting as clinical in nature and to respect the provider in that environment, the more they’re able to build trust with providers.

“When affordability becomes part of the clinical decision making process rather than an afterthought, it leads to better outcomes.”