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by tilting the playing field in favor of the large pharmas who could afford massive television
advertising budgets: now, venture-funded startups do most of the therapy-discovery work to
the point of proof of efficacy, and are then acquired by established firms when it comes time
to do the costly marketing. Fortunately, late in this same period another trend was emerging that would interact strongly
with both of the others: the maturing of the Internet and World Wide Web. The rise of
powerful search engines and the appearance of health portals such as WebMD were exactly
what the newly-assertive patients and caregivers needed to simplify their research tasks.
And the ability of these same mechanisms to lead patients directly to vendor-generated
content has begun to re-level the playing field substantially between the small drug or device
maker and the large multi-brand houses. In essence, it enables the small provider to “go
DTC” ...without incurring the huge TV advertising bill. The remainder of this paper will discuss how vendors can best capitalize on the opportunities
presented by this new world order; but first, we introduce a model that describes
patient/physician/vendor relationships and behavior in the current environment. MODELING THE PATIENT CONDITION/TREATMENT LIFECYCLE - Awareness/interest. The patient – or concerned relative / caregiver – has recently
become concerned about a particular set of symptoms, and is motivated to learn
more about the likely cause(s) and treatment options - Diagnosis / course of treatment. The patient goes to a physician to learn which of the
possible causes is at work, and probably to initiate an agreed treatment. - Purchase/treatment. The patient purchases the prescribed drug and begins treatment;
or schedules and appears for the recommended surgery. Alternatively, the patient
might become aware of new information causing him/her to go back to his
physician or even back to Stage I for further research (and in the extreme case, to
another physician). - Lifestyle/“Living-with”. In this stage, the patient is managing an ongoing condition,
probably with the aid of maintenance medications, possibly with post-surgical
lifestyle changes. (Note that each monthly drug refill presents a potential
opportunity to go back to an earlier stage and revisit everything.)
THE CONDITION/TREATMENT LIFECYCLE AND THE INTERNET
In the past, patients’ independent sources of information were limited to family and friends,
plus the relatively few published resources that did not require a prior medical education to
comprehend ...and most of those were organized like textbooks, not really amenable to
keying into by symptom. All that has changed with the Internet: there is now a vast << previous | next >>
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