Tuesday, April 15, 2014

The Importance of Clinical Data to a Doctor


Doctors are scientists and make decisions using unbiased scientific evidence.  When a doctor is trying to discover what pathology a patient is presenting with during an office visit, scientific information is collected by taking a patient history, a physical, and conducting a battery of tests such as blood chemistry, EKG, x-rays, etc.  All of this information is unbiased scientific information, they have been taught to do from medical school.  The same is true when doctors are making decisions to switch to a different drug.  

Over the last 10 years the percent of doctors reporting a desire for representatives to use clinical literature in their product discussions has risen from 80% in 2003¹ to 89% in 2012.² One survey respondent in the 2010 Sermo Survey ³ said, “If they want more time with physicians, they need to deliver more targeted clinical information to meet physician’s needs.”²  That same survey said that high quality representatives were representatives that were competent when discussing clinical studies and evidenced based medicine.  A 2008 TAP Consulting survey of eye doctors revealed that 90% of eye doctors reported a Knowledge of Clinical Studies as a trait they wanted in an industry representative.   

Due to the way doctors have been trained, and based on what they do every day they need clinical data to be able to make a decision to use your product.  If you want to ultimately change a behavior the best way to do that is to persuade the doctor by using clinical literature.  Doctors use clinical literature to challenge and change thinking.  If you want to change your doctor’s prescribing habits, you need to get familiar with your clinical data.   Now that you are convinced that doctors need clinical data, our next newsletter will focus on the best method to organize and present clinical data.  

  ¹ Accenture 2003 Physician’s Survey

² Sermo What Physicians Want Survey 2012

³ Sermo What Physicians Want Survey 2010     

 

 

 

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