Medical and pharmaceutical events can provide significant value for attendees, exhibitors, sponsors and host organizations, according to the opening statement of 2018 Healthcare Professionals Communication Report, as well as survey results in the report.
“The relationships [that] life-sciences firms and insurance-payers establish with medical professionals are crucial for business growth and improved healthcare outcomes alike,” states the first sentence of the report, created by Atlanta-based Health Link Dimensions and based on survey results from more than 730 physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
Learn more: Four Industry Veterans Shed Light on Pharmaceutical Meetings
Stephanie Bull, an analyst for Health Link Dimensions, notes that 77 percent of survey respondents said they preferred to learn about life-sciences developments through medical-education programs. But those could take the form of printed materials, an online segment, a presentation a company runs at a hospital location or sessions conducted at an industry event,” she says.
Furthermore, email—as opposed to sitting through online programs or meetings just once or twice a year with reps at industry events—is HCPs’ preferred means of contact from life-sciences companies. “It’s not that those in-person interactions aren’t valuable and desired,” Bull says. “They simply aren’t frequent enough to meet HCPs’ ongoing needs.”
Taken together, those two survey findings suggest that medical and pharmaceutical event organizers should work with their exhibitors and sponsors to craft email campaigns that deliver the right information to the attendee database at the right times of the year.
“Exhibitors and sponsors can begin the dialogue ahead of the event by providing HCPs with compelling information via email and linked digital assets,” Bull says. “Planners who provide those opportunities not only help satisfy the objectives of exhibitors and sponsors, but they also get HCPs to visit more event booths and learn more than if they arrived at the event with a limited base of knowledge. Such benefits drive the long-term health of in-person events.”
Read more about medical and pharmaceutical meetings in Rob Carey’s story, “The Ground Shifts Again: Four Industry Veterans Shed Light on Issues Affecting Medical and Pharmaceutical Meetings,” in the link above and in the August issue of Smart Meetings magazine.
