Industry & Business

While millions of people turn to digital when researching symptoms or looking up health conditions, Irish doctors still prefer traditional methods to educate themselves according to a study conducted by GSK. The study looked at the digital habits of Irish medics and found that while Irish doctors are increasingly looking to online resources, including pharmaceutical company websites (61%), they still rate these less credible than face-to-face or more traditional information sources. The study, conducted amongst a national representation of Irish GP’s and hospital specialists, revealed that only 15% found medical information on social media as ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ credible. Even when it was a specialised healthcare professional only social media network (HCP group) credibility was still only ranked at 31%. Not surprising, medical journals (100%), prescribing guides (99%), healthcare professional bodies (98%) and medical conferences (94%) were rated as the most credible sources of information respectively.

Speaking at the launch, Eimear Caslin, Commercial Director at GSK Pharmaceuticals said, “The relationship between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals is essential in helping develop medicines and treating patients so it’s really important that GSK ensures we are providing accurate, up to date information on our medicines. We wanted to invest in new digital ways of engaging with HCPs at a time, place, and through channels convenient to them.  By combining the benefits of our digital channels, including websites, webinars, emails, click-to-chat and analytics, with our face-to-face channels we can greatly increase the numbers of HCPs we can speak with, engage and educate with real-time information about our medicines and vaccines.”

GSK is hoping to make a step change and differentiate themselves digitally as a reputable and trusted source of product information for healthcare providers. This is due to its changes in their value based driven ways of working, and a positive step in the right direction with just over a third of the studies respondents rating GSK as innovative in its digital offering and further findings including; 32% ranking GSK’s website as having ‘relevant content’, 33% stating that GSK provides effective ways  to communicate via digital platforms and nearly 50% viewing GSK as offering valuable professional development resources (e.g. online study modules, webinar etc).

Richard Corbridge the CIO of the Health Service Executive added; “The study clearly indicates that healthcare companies are in need of an ‘upgrade’ in terms of how information is used. It generates further debate about how the system communicates and educates in healthcare in the digital space. Although interaction between healthcare companies and healthcare professionals has traditionally been face to face, there has been positive steps made throughout the way we work in recognising this needs to evolve such as the onset of webinars the use of social media and the continued growth of video as a means of communication. In fact, with nearly three quarters of this survey’s healthcare professionals in agreement that pharma companies play a major role in education for HCPs, medical charities and patient groups, it’s an obvious endorsement of the changes made to date across the sector as a whole to better fit the needs of today’s modern medics.”

He went on to say, “eHealth Ireland has embraced the implementation of digital as a priority for the health system in Ireland, studies like this provide us with more evidence, more ways to engage and an affirmation that the reform of all health systems across the world can only truly be achieved through the onset of a digital change, a digital fabric for Ireland is our goal over the next three years.”