social media in the japanese pharmaceutical industry › files ›...

Creation Healthcare www.creationhealthcare.com

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Social Media in the Japanese Pharmaceutical Industry Report Author: Thibaud Guymard

May 2011


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About Creation Healthcare

Over the past decade, the environment in which global health and healthcare organizations operate has evolved dramatically. Relationships between health stakeholders have been changed forever by the globalization of health and medicine information. For the first time in history, communication between stakeholders takes place in real time; patients empower each other, forming large worldwide communities of shared experiences; and previously trusted relationships have been replaced by a search engine.

In today’s era, Healthcare Engagement – the complex evolving relationship between connected healthcare stakeholders – has become the most significant factor in the success or failure of healthcare organizations. Successful Healthcare Engagement capitalizes on the changing environment, identifying and responding to opportunities to improve business effectiveness, and producing improved business and health outcomes at lower costs. Those organizations implementing successful Healthcare Engagement with Creation Healthcare’s counsel are experiencing results they had never seen before. They are achieving improved effectiveness amongst their worldwide teams; faster response to real-time stakeholder engagement; greater level of accountability for return on investment.

Creation Healthcare is a specialist, research-led consultancy helping healthcare organizations to achieve better results through digital engagement. With an in-depth understanding of the pharmaceutical and healthcare environment globally gained through over twelve years researching and advising industry professionals, the consultancy's international team brings a global perspective with local cultural and language insights.

Creation Healthcare, Tokyo Shinjuku Park Tower, 30th Floor 3-7-1 Nishi-Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 163-1030 Japan Telephone: +81-3-5326-3369 Email: [email protected]

Creation Healthcare Global Headquarters, London 90 Long Acre London WC2E 9RZ United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0)207 849 3167 Email: [email protected]


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Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 5

Results and Insights ................................................................................................................................ 6

Who answered? .................................................................................................................................. 6

Roles ................................................................................................................................................ 6

Digital Awareness ................................................................................................................................ 7

Patient-doctor relationship ............................................................................................................. 7

A new relationship between patients and doctors in Japan .......................................................... 8

Use of Social Media ......................................................................................................................... 9

Social Media & engagement with stakeholders ........................................................................... 11

Social Media utility for communicating with stakeholders .......................................................... 13

Digital Channels ............................................................................................................................ 15

Digital Challenges .............................................................................................................................. 19

Implementation ............................................................................................................................ 19

Most challenging aspects .............................................................................................................. 21

Insights .............................................................................................................................................. 22

Social Media to connect with patients ......................................................................................... 22

Outcomes from connecting with patients through Social Media ................................................. 23

Pharma & Social media in Japan - The most admired .................................................................. 24

Future ................................................................................................................................................ 25

Role of Social Media in Japan ........................................................................................................ 25

Evolution of budgets ..................................................................................................................... 28


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Introduction Together with eyeforpharma , Creation Healthcare has carried out a research initiative amongst marketers, communicators and business leaders in the Japanese pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. The goal of this research was to provide insights into current and future vision for the role of digital media, and in particular social media, amongst Japanese professionals in the pharmaceutical industry.

Creation Healthcare presented the results of this research in Tokyo during the 4th Annual Marketing Excellence Japan 2011 Conference organised by eyeforpharma, May 17-18 2011.

In this document you will find the results of our research. You will learn about the current levels of awareness and use of digital channels amongst the pharmaceutical industry in Japan. Moreover, this report highlights the challenges faced internally in implementing digital initiatives, and provides a forecast of future budget expenditure by channel.

You will also find insights about the perception of the evolution of the relationship between patients and doctors in Japan. Research respondents amongst the Japanese pharmaceutical industry have also shared their ideas about how their companies could use social media to connect more effectively with patients.

Furthermore, insights from this research will inform you about the kind of outcomes these Japanese professionals are looking for when it comes to using social media to connect with patients.


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Methodology An extensive survey was developed by Creation Healthcare and eyeforpharma and deployed in English and Japanese languages. The survey was distributed amongst pharmaceutical company professionals, 51 of whom responded by participating in the survey. Whilst it was considered that a shorter length survey might have received a greater number of completed responses, the survey was designed to be comprehensive enough to capture the level of detail required to gain a clear view of the current environment. On behalf of Creation Healthcare and eyeforpharma, we would like to thank respondents for their participation and the information they shared with us. The analysis of survey results, and the development of this report, have been carried out by Creation Healthcare.


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Results and Insights

Who answered?

The analysis of the surveys revealed that 94 % of the responders are living in Japan.

80 % work for a pharmaceutical company and the rest work amongst the healthcare sector. 76 % are responsible for marketing activities.

Roles

In order to interpret correctly the results presented above, it is important to remember that 51 people have been surveyed overall but for this question, people were allowed to give multiple answers. As a result, the sum of all the roles recorded (60) is greater than the number of participants (51). As we can see, most of those surveyed are marketers. 22 people have a role relating to marketing but may also be responsible for other roles.

0

5

10

15

20

25

Marketing Other Sales Executive leadership (CEO,

CFO etc)

Communications

Which of the following most accurately represents your role in your organization?


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It is worthwhile noting that a number of professionals, 16 people, are also working in a different role to those suggested by the survey. 10 of the respondents are in sales roles. It was encouraging to note that Executive Leadership makes up 8 of the survey respondents, adding value to the results because of their likely vision and perception of the market from a business leadership perspective and their likely influence in the evolution of engagement strategies development in Japan. Communicators are less well represented than other areas, with only 4 people.

Digital Awareness Patient-doctor relationship

It is interesting to see the large agreement on this question.

Indeed, 78 % of the respondents think that the Internet has changed the relationship between patients and doctors in Japan. In fact, this confirms that Japan is experiencing the same cultural change and evolution that we already see in Europe and in the United States.

78%

22%

Has the Internet changed the relationship between patients and physicians in Japan?

Yes

No


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It is worthwhile noting that this has occurred in a country where cultural influences may have made this shift more difficult than in other parts of the world.

A new relationship between patients and doctors in Japan

We analysed respondents’ comments about what they think has changed this relationship between patients and doctors. From 37 open comments, we have extracted some key insights.

For Patients, it seems that the access to drug information has been one of the key elements that has changed their relationship with their doctors, in particular with regards to improved access to information about side effects. Another insight that comes from the analysis is that this access to information makes the patients aware of existing drugs and this may lead to them having some influence over their doctors’ prescriptions. Finally, this new relationship is considered to have empowered patients.

For Doctors, the changing environment seems to have raised concerns about their reputation due to the fact that their patients now have access to information they may not be aware of, or because of new behaviours that affect the doctors’ authority (such as post drug prescription research, ratings on websites, etc.). Japanese pharmaceutical professionals responding to the survey wrote that doctors feel worried about misinformation and quality of information available online. At the same time, it seems that doctors do have, like patients, better access to information thanks to the Internet. A key insight shared by the survey respondents is that a concern seems apparent amongst doctors that there is a risk of compromising the trusted relationship that they have with their patients. Indeed, doctors may have the feeling that they are losing the trusted relationship they had with their patients because of the amount of information available on Internet, which can lead to a rejection of doctors’ advice by their patients.

Other insights we found revealed that this new relationship is reducing the gap between doctors and patients, whilst at the same time patients seem to have more information from their doctors (both verbally and also by referring websites), and all of this results in increasing patients’ knowledge.

“The relationship is becoming equal”


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Use of Social Media

Numerous social media platforms exist in Japan. We decided to ask Japanese pharmaceutical professionals which ones they have ever used and we suggested six of Japan’s most famous social media platforms.

The results show that three of them are clearly much more used than the others. Indeed, Twitter, Mixi and Facebook are the most popular social media platforms amongst respondents in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry in Japan. This is in line with other indicators reflecting the evolution of Japanese social media platforms use (see figure 1 below).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Which of the following social media tools have you ever used?


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Figure 1: Mixi, Facebook, Twitter, Ameba and Gree interest over time in Japan

This information, both from the survey and the interest over time for these social media platforms, also shows that the level of usage amongst respondents in the pharmaceutical sector of these different platforms are not aligned with the relative interest levels amongst the Japanese population, where Facebook has by far the highest level of interest.

This misalignment between popular social media trends and adoption of tools by pharmaceutical companies is reflected in Europe and in the United States too, since the choice of channels is affected a wide range of factors including regulatory issues and sensitivity over two-way engagement.


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Social Media & engagement with stakeholders

The emergence of social media has changed the way that pharmaceutical companies can interact and communicate with their different stakeholders. It has opened several new channels of communication, and many more opportunities to build ‘genuine’ relationships and engagement internally or externally.

In this environment, we thought it was interesting to measure the extent of the use of social media to communicate with some of their most important stakeholders.

Interestingly, it appears that most of survey respondents are predominantly not using social media to communicate with key stakeholders.

That said, we can see that Friends or family members of patients (40 %1) and the patients (36 %) themselves are the stakeholders with whom Japanese professionals are primarily engaging, using social media.

The second group which respondents are engaging with through social media are Healthcare Professionals (Physicians: 28 % and Pharmacists: 20 %).

1 We summed the results of people who answered “Frequently”, “Sometimes” and “Rarely” to measure the engagement. This does not necessarily represent the level of engagement.

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

To what extent are you currently using social media to communicate with the following

groups?

Not using it

Rarely

Sometimes

Frequently


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The results are presented in more details in the board below:

To what extent are you currently using social media to communicate with the following groups?

Not using it Rarely Sometimes Frequently

Friends or family members of patients 61% 14% 20% 6%

Patients 65% 18% 14% 4%

Physicians 73% 20% 6% 2%

Pharmacists 80% 12% 6% 2%

Hospitals 80% 14% 6% 0%

Health insurers 86% 12% 2% 0%

Government or policy-makers 86% 12% 2% 0%


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Social Media utility for communicating with stakeholders

This chart shows how useful could social media be for communicating with different type of stakeholders.

As we can see again, Patients and Friends or family members of patients are the two groups which for whom social media seems to be the most useful to use for communicating.

Indeed, 86 % of surveyed professionals think that Social Media is useful2 for communicating with Patients. Regarding the Friends or family members of patients the result is up to 88 %.

Again, healthcare professionals are the second group of stakeholder’s with whom it seems useful to use Social Media for communicating with. Indeed, 82 % agreed for the Physicians and 73 % for the Pharmacists.

2 We sum the results of the people who answered “Very useful” and “Somewhat useful” to express the usefulness. Assuming this is not representing a level of engagement.

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%

In your opinion, how uselful could Social Media be for communicating with the

following groups?

Not useful

Somewhat useful

Very useful


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It also seems that social media may be considered useful, but less significantly, for communicating with Hospitals. Indeed, whilst 59 % think it may be “useful”, only 4 % think it may be “very useful”.

Finally, it does not seem to be considered useful to use social media for communicating with Health insurers and Government or policy-makers.

Indeed, 61 % of the professionals surveyed think that social media is not useful for communicating with Health insurers and 73 % for the Governments or policy-makers.

More details about the results are illustrated in the table below:

In your opinion, how useful could Social Media be for communicating with the following groups?

Not useful Somewhat useful Very useful

Patients 14% 47% 39%

Friends or family members of patients 12% 51% 37%

Physicians 18% 59% 24%

Pharmacists 27% 61% 12%

Hospitals 41% 55% 4%

Health insurers 61% 37% 2%

Government or policy-makers 73% 25% 2%


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Digital Channels

In Japan, it seems clear that ‘web 2.0’ channels of communication such as social networks for healthcare professionals or patients, social media platforms and blogs, are not widely used. Indeed, only 22 % of the survey respondents are currently using social media and 18% are using blogs blogs. However, we note that healthcare professionals’ networks and patient networks seem to be considered more used, both with 41 % and 35 % of respondents saying they are already using them.

On another side, more common digital channels such as websites, emails or online advertising are used widely by pharmaceutical companies in Japan. 88 % of those surveyed are currently managing websites to communicate about their company or their products. Emails are also broadly used (80 %) and to a lesser extent, online advertising is currently used by 65 % of respondents.

Other digital channels are also emerging as we can see in the results above. Mobile and video are moderately used, with 53 % currently using mobile channels and 49 % video.

It is interesting to consider the chart above with the following: To gain a complete picture of Japanese market trends, we wanted to be able to compare the digital channels that respondents are already using with the ones they are not planning to use, and the digital channels that they expect to use in the near future.

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Which of the following digital channels is your organization using?

Currently using


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We have seen in the previous chart that channels such as website, email and online advertising are currently and widely used. Thus, it is not surprising to see that only a few people are not planning to use them. On the other extreme of the chart, we can see that whilst many respondents are not currently using social media or blogs, a large majority are also not planning to use these channels in the near future. Indeed, 71 % are not planning to use social media and 57 % blogs.

Some respondents are also not planning to use other digital channels (mobile, video, healthcare professionals and patient’s networks) but to a lower extent. It is worthwhile considering that those respondents who are currently not using these digital channels may be inclined to indicate a reluctance to use them in the future, too.

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%


Not planning to use


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The chart above shows which digital channels are most likely to be planned for the future.

Firtsly, it is notable that the percentage of people planning to use or integrate these digital channels into their projects is quite low. Indeed, patient networks are here the most popular (29 %) channel to explore in the near future, with healthcare professionals networks slightly behind (25 %).

Again, it is important to keep in mind that even if this chart and the figures present interesting trends, the overall picture shows that there are still more people not planning to use these channels than planning to, in the near future.

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%


Planning for future


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The results are shown in more detail in the table below:


Currently

using Planning for

future Not

planning to use

Website 88% 6% 6%

Email 80% 6% 14%

Online advertising 65% 8% 27%

Mobile 53% 14% 33%

Video 49% 24% 27%

Healthcare professionals’ networks 41% 25% 33%

Patient or consumer networks 35% 29% 35%

Social media 22% 22% 57%

Blogs 18% 12% 71%

These results indicate that there is some hesitation to embracing social media and developing a range of different digital channels in the Japanese market. These results may be explained by the challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry professionals surveyed.

The following section will present the results of the survey on this particular point and highlight the major digital challenges.


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Digital Challenges Implementation

This chart shows clearly that there is a range of barriers to implementing digital or social media amongst the pharmaceutical industry in Japan.

Interestingly, technical knowledge does not seem to be an issue. Indeed, it may be a slight challenge for some professionals (37 %), but it is not a challenge or not much of a challenge for a majority of them (51 %3).

3 We summed the results of the people who answered “Not a challenge” (10 %) and “Not much of a challenge” (41 %).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

To what extent are the following concerns barriers to implementing digital or social

media?

Not a challenge

Not much of a challenge

Slight challenge

Significant challenge


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Issues relating to knowledge or experience using social media may be a challenge for a majority (62 %) of the professionals but this does not seem to be one of the primary concerns or barriers to implementing social media or digital initiatives.

Indeed, other challenges seem to be much more of a concern for the survey respondents.

In fact, loss of control, privacy issues and regulatory compliance issues come first with 61 %, 55 % and 53 % of people indicating that they are significant issues. Moreover, if we go further and sum the overall percentages of people that think these points are challenges, 90 %4 think Privacy is a challenge to implementing digital or social media, 88 % for regulatory compliance issues and 86 % for loss of control.

Second comes other challenges which are slightly less a barrier but all the same seem to be important. “Time and human resources required to use social media tools” and “return on investment”, are a barrier for 84 % and 80 % of survey respondents respectively.

More details about these results are illustrated in the table below:

To what extent are the following concerns barriers to implementing digital or social media?

Not a challenge

Not much of a challenge

Slight challenge

Significant challenge

Loss of control 4% 10% 25% 61%

Privacy 2% 8% 35% 55%

Regulatory compliance 2% 10% 35% 53%

Time and human resources required to use social media tools

0% 16% 47% 37%

Return on investment 2% 18% 45% 35%

Knowledge or experience using social media 8% 29% 33% 29%

Technical knowledge 10% 41% 37% 12%

4 We summed the results of the people who answered “Significant challenge” (55 %) and “Slight challenge” (35 %).


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Most challenging aspects

With the researched understanding of the specific challenges faced by pharmaceutical companies using social media in the Japanese market, it can be clearly seen that the most important challenges faced are “Regulator compliance”, “Loss of control” fears and “Privacy” issues. Other concerns were expressed about the “Reliability of information on Social Media”.

The key challenges are thus summarised as:

• Regulatory compliance

• Loss of control

• Privacy


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Insights

Social Media to connect with patients

Through this research, we questioned professionals in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry to learn more about their thoughts on how they could use social media to connect with patients more effectively. The main insights they shared with us are the following:

• Design disease awareness campaigns

• Understand patients’ needs

• Provide correct drug information

• Create educational activities

• Listening, and informing strategy

• Two-way communication

• Build or engage with online communities

• Provide understandable information


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Outcomes from connecting with patients through Social Media

We also asked survey participants what outcomes pharmaceutical companies could expect to achieve from connecting with patients using social media. The answers shared indicate that respondents consider that connecting with patients through social media may achieve the following outcomes:

• Building trusted relationships

• Understanding patients better

• Improving patients quality of life

• Improving compliance

• Increasing transparency

• Improving relevance of information

• Increasing sales

• Detecting side effects

• Gaining feedback

• Building win-win relationships


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Pharma & Social media in Japan - The most admired

We asked survey participants which pharmaceutical company they most admire for their effective use of social media in Japan5. Interestingly, the first and the three second on the podium are not Japanese pharmaceutical companies; whilst Japanese companies were mentioned they rank lower in the results.

GlaxoSmithKline is the most admired pharmaceutical company by peers in Japan for their effective use of social media.

Novartis, Pfizer and Astrazeneca win the second place equally and finally Otsuka, Chugai and SSP are ranked third.

5 Note that these results are based on 16 answers shared by professionals in the pharmaceutical industry.

2

1

3SSP


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Future

This research was also about understanding the evolution of the role of social media in the near future.

This section will present insights on the future of social media in Japan from the viewpoint of survey participants.

Role of Social Media in Japan

As we have already established in this report, social media does not seem to be used widely by Japanese pharmaceutical companies. The chart on the next page illustrates how professionals in pharmaceutical companies see the role of social media in healthcare in Japan .


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Firstly, the role of social media is viewed as a channel that can primarily help patients to find support online, to improve their access to information and to be empowered. Moreover, it can also help pharmaceutical professionals to learn about patients’ views.

Indeed, survey respondents first agreed with the fact that the role of social media could be to “help patients support each other” (94 %6) and to “Help [pharmaceutical industry professionals] to learn about patient views” (90 %). Secondly, they also agreed on a role of social media to “improve information for patients” (77 %), for empowering patients (71 %), 6 We summed the results of the people who answered they “Agree” (53 %) and “Strongly agree” (41 %). The same approach was used for the following percentages of this chapter.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

What do you see as the role of social media in healthcare in Japan?

Strongly Disagree

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree


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“Help [pharmaceutical industry professionals] to connect with other healthcare stakeholders” and to a lesser extent although still agreed by the majority, to “Improve the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and physicians” (55 %) and “Overall, improves healthcare outcomes” (67 %).

Overall, survey participants disagreed with the possible role of social media to “Helps physicians to understand medicines better” (53 % disagree). In fact, this result is interesting because it means that respondents predominantly think that social media is unlikely to have a role in increasing the understanding or awareness of medicines in Japan in the near future.

Respondents disagree even more strongly (58 %) that social media could play a role in pharmacovigilance and “be a tool for monitoring adverse drug reactions”.

More details about the results above are in the following table:

What do you see as the role of social media in healthcare in Japan? Strongly

Disagree Disagree Agree Strongly Agree

Helps patients support each other 0% 6% 53% 41%

Helps me to learn about patient views 2% 8% 55% 35%

Improves information for patients 10% 14% 55% 22%

Empowers patients 10% 20% 51% 20%

Helps me to connect with other healthcare stakeholders

12% 18% 57% 14%

Improves relationship between pharmaceutical companies and physicians

14% 31% 43% 12%

Overall, improves healthcare outcomes 6% 27% 57% 10%

Helps physicians to understand medicines better

20% 33% 37% 10%

Is a tool for monitoring adverse drug reactions 27% 31% 35% 6%


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Evolution of budgets

There is apparently not a particular budget that will significantly decrease in the near future. However, according to these results, we can say that printed materials budgets will decrease during 2011, compared to 2010 in Japan7.

Indeed, 35 % of the survey respondents think their budget for printed materials will decrease and 43 % say it will stay same during 2011 compared to 2010. This means it will not decrease drastically although this is a clear trend in the market.

Television budgets appear likely to stay the same for the majority of respondents (35 %).

Budget spend on Japanese sales force is likely to slightly increase during the year. In fact, 29 %8 of the survey respondents indicate that budgets for their sales force will increase while 49 % will stay the same and only 4 % will decrease.

7 Always remember that variations of “Non applicable” people answers may have an impact on the results.

8 We sum the results of the people who answered the budgets will “Increase” (25 %) and “Significantly increase” (4 %).

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

How will your budget spend change in 2011, compared with 2010?

Significantly decrease

Decrease

Stay same

Increase

Significantly increase

Not applicable


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Social media and e-detailing are likely to slightly increase too, according to the survey (see chart above and details below).

Websites and especially Mobile budgets will increase in 2011 compared to 2010. Indeed, Mobile budgets will grow for 32 % of the respondents and stay the same for 27 %. Meanwhile, website budgets will increase for 35 % of them and stay same for 47 %.

These trends are interesting because they show similar trends in changes to budgets that may be expected in Europe and the USA. Indeed, this illustrates a similar evolution between the “old” marketing channels and the emerging digital channels.

More details about the results above may be seen in this table:

How will your budget spend change in 2011, compared with 2010? Significantly

decrease Decrease Stay same Increase Significantly increase Not applicable

Mobile 0% 8% 27% 22% 10% 33%

Websites 2% 8% 47% 27% 8% 8%

Social media 0% 2% 29% 16% 8% 45%

e-detailing 2% 4% 39% 22% 6% 27%

Sales force 2% 2% 49% 25% 4% 18%

Television 0% 14% 35% 6% 6% 39%

Printed materials 4% 31% 43% 6% 2% 14%

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