The Healthcare Leaders Podcast

What is The Healthcare Leaders Podcast?

The Healthcare Leaders Podcast by Medico Digital is a fun, straight-talking look at the world of healthcare and pharma marketing - the good, the bad and the ugly!

With interviews from industry experts on everything from creativity to compliance, The Healthcare Leaders Podcast is every health marketer's guide to staying ahead and getting results.

You can expect:

- Interviews with top healthcare marketing experts and influencers.
- Unfiltered insights and advice on the latest healthcare marketing trends.
- Actionable tips and strategies to help you elevate your healthcare brand.
- A behind-the-scenes look at some of the industry's hottest topics.

Whether you're a healthcare marketing newbie or a seasoned veteran, this podcast is for you. We'll give you the insights and inspiration you need to elevate your healthcare brand online in an easy-to-digest, jargon-free podcast!

Find more at https://www.medicodigital.co.uk/

Ollie (00:02.128)
Hello and welcome to the Health Care Leaders podcast. And today is the first episode of a new podcast series that aims to dive deep into the world of pharmaceutical marketing and medical communications and how it impacts healthcare professionals. So in today's fast paced healthcare industry, it's more important than ever for pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers,

life sciences, organisations, you name it, to be able to communicate effectively with HCPs. But all too often we see a spray and pray approach to marketing that bombards doctors with generic irrelevant messages. It not only wastes valuable time when it's very finite, but it can also hinder healthcare professionals' ability to provide the best possible care for their patients.

sanjay (00:45.803)
Okay.

Ollie (00:56.272)
So I'm your host, Oliver Cable, and today I'm joined by consultant gynecologist, gynecologist rather, Mr. Sanjay Veers, who was former consultant at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, for over two decades and also the former president of the British Society of Gynecological Endoscopy, BSGE. Interesting anecdote for those listeners out there.

Sanjay was also Medico's first client way back when we started in 2015. So delighted to have you back here and contributing to this topic. Sanjay is recognized nationally for his expertise in laparoscopic surgery and pelvic ultrasound. And he's going to provide us with an insider's view of some of the most educational, most effective educational resources and digital tools as we examine the current state of pharma marketing and our...

tough questions about what we can do better. We'll explore strategies and solutions for creating more targeted, meaningful, and impactful marketing that truly supports healthcare professionals in their vital work. So if you're a healthcare professional looking to stay informed or a pharma marketer seeking to improve your approach, or simply someone who cares about the future of healthcare, hopefully this podcast has some useful insights for you. So welcome Sanjay.

going to start, just dive straight in. Tell us a little bit about your previous private practice, or practice in general, in fact, and what your go-to sources of information were when you wanted to stay up to date.

sanjay (02:34.433)
Hi Ollie, good to speak with you again. So I was appointed as a consultant in 1994, frighteningly, before a lot of people were born now, including you.

Ollie (02:48.488)
Yeah

sanjay (02:51.302)
Those days were different. It was a pre-digital age, so we didn't have computers like we do now, pre-internet, pre-mobile phones. So a lot of our interactions were face-to-face then. And we put a lot of store by that. You would have pharma representatives coming to see you on a regular basis, and they would be providing us with information on their latest products, the background information to it as well. The marketing was also slightly...

simplistic in a sense, they inevitably left you with a pen and some post-it notes in the days when we wrote things down. And that was a source of information. The other areas that we would, in a more sophisticated way, that we would use for information were journals. We would all have subscriptions to various journals that we would read, we'd go to libraries to look things up in the latest journals.

And then conferences as well where you'd hear speakers about presenting the latest results on cutting edge technology in my particular field, surgery and medication as well, pharma. So quite a broad base, but as I say, most of it face to face.

Ollie (04:11.304)
Great. And did you have a particular preferred format that you would obtain new medical information and specifically how would you assess the relevancy of, and the credibility of that information?

sanjay (04:30.458)
In a sense you used different methods in different ways. So the Pharma rep for example would be a short meeting and they'd come in fully briefed with some publications on their products and I then kind of placed them in my own thought processes in terms of where they belong.

But then the source of the information was what guided you. And I think that applies even now. So an authoritative body presenting information such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which in my field at the time was the highest ranked authoritative body would be information that you would absolutely trust. You knew that had been processed and developed to the highest standards.

Since then, again this is a bit of a historical thing, but of course the NICE came along since then, the Cochrane collaboration was developed since then. So more sophisticated methods of analyzing information and synthesizing it into guidelines was a new development and still I think that process is highly developed, but in terms of healthcare professionals.

they would be the go-to places for the most reliable and trustworthy information, because you know that it's gone through a review process to come to its conclusions. And that's what drives practice at the highest level.

Ollie (06:13.808)
So many of those bodies that you just mentioned there, they will have publications, journals, and more so nowadays they've got online publications. Would you, you would seek them out specifically for further information, or if that, if you came into contact with those materials, you would inevitably trust those much more than say, a pharma rep coming to you face to face, is that right?

sanjay (06:42.242)
Yes, far more, far more. Because those sources take a more global view of a condition or a procedure, whereas the pharma rep comes by definition and that's accepted on both sides, my side and the pharma rep side, they come with a product that they wish to pursue.

And as I say, I think that interaction is becoming more and more sophisticated as well, because pharma reps are aware that with the explosion in information, healthcare practitioners are aware of a whole range of medications or products, and the rep then has to put his or her product within the context of what is available, rather than just pushing one. So we've become much more sophisticated consumers.

And I think the challenge for industry is to be able to position their offerings within that more sophisticated marketplace that we're aware of.

Ollie (07:49.988)
Yes, absolutely. So to take the British Society for gynecological endoscopy, for example, or one of those other bodies, in terms of the formats of materials that they would provide, obviously there's been an increase in digital usage over the last few years. For your own personal preferences, would you...

rely on information that's provided in printed format or would you go on to the websites and find information that way that was particularly useful?

sanjay (08:26.902)
I think there's again a huge change. The printed format is all but gone now for me. It's all on the computer. Whether I access it through a written publication, going to PubMed to do a search and then getting down to...

in the source publications or using the BSGE, the specialist society or the Royal College websites to get the more developed guidelines. But the other space that I think is completely new is webinars where this is something that the British Society of Gynecology does really well presenting authorities in a particular field.

in the format of a webinar. And at its best, that can be an interactive process as well, which actually has a huge amount of educational validity and strength and makes it much more interesting and engaging. Now those, that's where, if we look at it from the point of farmer and industry.

sponsoring a webinar that looks at a condition or a procedure where they have an offering is a really strong way to position their product, I think, rather than just, you know, prescribe drug X or use gadget Y. So I think that that's a new development and I'm a real fan of it.

Ollie (10:00.592)
So I'm just trying to ascertain, I guess, how you would come into contact. So you'd be offered with a webinar, for example, you'd be maybe invited to that webinar via an email that might arrive in your inbox, or you would go on the website and see that they're running a webinar or it's in a publication that they're promoting it, and then you would sign up specifically, is that right?

sanjay (10:21.694)
Both. So the BSG is a membership organisation. When they've scheduled a webinar, that email goes out to all members, so you're aware that it's coming up, and then you can sign up for that. And it'll also be put up on their website as an announcement of what's coming up.

Ollie (10:25.926)
Mm-hmm.

Ollie (10:41.76)
Okay, and you would generally find that the topic of content was relevant, it was timely to the types of patients that you were seeing in practice, those sorts of things.

sanjay (10:53.33)
Yes, and I think the other thing is it allows the BSG and in situations where it's sponsored to make sure that the topic is timely and it adds to what is known already. So, often deals with new developments or new thoughts on a disease or new knowledge on origin or treatment.

So it doesn't replicate a publication in a journal or a paper, which is a scientific study. It's a more general presentation and discussion.

Ollie (11:37.208)
Yeah. Okay. So, so within the, their industry now, particularly with an agency world and pharma, there's a lot of talk about omni-channel communications, which effectively, if you boil it down, is delivering really relevant, timely information to that healthcare professional at the point of care. So supporting them in their healthcare decision-making and using the different channels.

that they would frequently use to make sure that they're getting that message in a format that they easily understand, can access, is digestible. For you, would you say that within your practice, it was much more of a case of seeking out that information yourself by looking at those membership body websites, um, just being aware and understanding, or would you find that actually farmer

would do a good job of getting in front of you with the right message at the right time.

sanjay (12:42.079)
I think that the phrase omni-channel kind of raises concern for me. It sounds like I'm going to be bombarded.

Ollie (12:54.297)
I'm gonna go.

sanjay (12:54.41)
my farmer through all my ways of being accessed. And that actually can be very intrusive and I think will be hugely counterproductive. I think the balance has to be between farmer industry coming to me and me going somewhere to find out about what I need to learn about drugs or...

sanjay (13:22.886)
services and gadgets and things, you know, equipment. That balance is more finely tuned now than being bombarded.

Ollie (13:34.576)
think that's so important, just respecting your own privacy and supporting you when you're in that time of need, rather than trying to predict when you might be at that time of need and give you information that might not be relevant at that particular time and uses that those personal channels. And I think it kind of segues quite nicely into what I wanted to talk about next in terms of

digital and social media usage. And I wanted to kind of talk about specifically in your own personal and professional life, are there any specific kind of mainstream social media channels that you use? So for example, at the moment, there's a bit of a growing trend with TikTok. There's apparently 4 million active healthcare professionals using TikTok for not just posting information, but also finding healthcare.

And I just wanted to get your take on specifically which channels you use, both personally and professionally, and yeah, which of those from a professional point of view are effective.

sanjay (14:41.526)
I think that war is a function of my age and anything else. I don't have a social media presence. I'm not on Facebook or TikTok. I've seen a few TikTok things, mainly through family, we do it for fun and enjoying. My daughters show me things that...

of a fun. But my concern about that sort of communication is that there is no kind of kite marking or quality assurance process that goes with it. It's so easy for everyone to put something on Facebook or Instagram and so on and put up a little TikTok video together. But it has to...

I have to pass a quality threshold for it to be useful. And this applies to healthcare professionals as well as patients. I think that there's a huge amount of information that I get told about my patients that they find on social media, which just does not pass the smell test for me, you know? And just because it's on social media does not make it a fact. Just because somebody says so on TikTok does not make it a fact.

And I think that we need to develop certain levels of skepticism about stuff that's put on there. And equally as much, I think, organizations that seek to inform health care professionals and patients have a massive responsibility to make sure that they continue to practice to the highest levels of evidence-based medicine. And sadly, I think that does get diluted at times.

Ollie (16:21.74)
100% agree. Let me, let's circle back in a minute to the kind of patient side of communications because I think that's an interesting area to explore but if we stick with your professional practice and information, if we, if for example Nice and I just had to fact check this because I didn't know if they did or not they don't as far as I can see.

had a TikTok page, they do have a Facebook page, they do have, they do leverage YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter on NowEx. If you were to see information posted by them on any of those channels, you, would you engage with that content? Would you find that useful and helpful?

sanjay (17:06.746)
I think I might use them as a means to signpost me to what the source document was. So I wouldn't go to any of those with a question. They would just be used as signposts for me.

Ollie (17:27.392)
Okay, yeah, no, I mean, that makes perfect sense. I guess from your perspective, do you see them as a potential kind of mechanism to communicate with other healthcare professionals? So for example, there's quite a lot of, in terms of online communities, Twitter or X, there's quite an active community of cardiologists on there. Are you aware of any kind of other online?

sanjay (17:40.078)
Thanks for watching!

Ollie (17:55.068)
gynecology communities that use social media channels at all. I mean, it sounds as though you've got a little bit of skepticism towards social media, which is quite understandable, but from a, just a professional perspective, you don't think that that's something that could be useful for your private practice or your, your practicing general in terms of delivering content.

sanjay (18:15.49)
Yes, I am part of an online community of gynecologists that's hosted by the AGL, the American Association of Gynecological Neproscopists. That is very interesting.

It's where people post interesting clinical questions of complex cases, opinions and so on. And that is useful of interest, but it's an online community that I've signed into. And I suppose if you remove my scepticism and go to, if such a thing is possible, on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, and have an online community.

that you sign into where the rules of engagement are clear, that you will only be talking about clinical matters and also that whatever opinion is put forward is itself fact checked by the author and an element of peer review as well for accuracy and where possible, where needed to say that there is no known.

uh... you know we don't have a full guideline on situation x my opinion on the basis of my experience is that we should do x y or z and that sort of information sharing is helpful it actually is only a digital extension of what happened in the old days when i was a young surgeon if i had questions or a young obstetrician in the field of women's health

If I had a case that I wanted advice on, I'd wander down the corridor and ask a colleague. I suppose the digital platforms allow me to ask many, many more colleagues all around the world. But at the same time, I need to know that those colleagues are trustworthy, as I would have done by walking down the corridor. And so some amount of policing is needed. You know, some amount of rule obeying has to take place. It can't just be a space where people can shout loudly.

Ollie (20:08.752)
Yeah.

sanjay (20:20.863)
and expect that to carry.

Ollie (20:23.012)
Yeah. So if I can surmise that it's a closed or gated community where it is just professionals or healthcare professionals. That is the community. The rules of engagement are clearly laid out. Like you said, that's something that you would feel comfortable engaging in discourse about a clinical matter, but you leveraging a mainstream social media platform like Facebook to other, but beyond signposting.

would be not something that you would look to do in terms of just having any discourse around clinical practice.

sanjay (21:00.607)
No, I wouldn't, although I can see the commercial benefits of doing that because, you know, it'd be quite easy and I know, I can see several examples of people who become a Facebook

based practitioners, medical practitioners, and that would give them a commercial advantage in terms of private practice. So I can see that and I can see that that's just another form of advertising. But I think it's important that it is seen to be that rather than them being authoritative people to be giving out information for patients.

Ollie (21:39.308)
I think if I recall back a few days ago, there was a, there was in fact a guest from the States, obviously, who was known as the king or queen of gynecology just because of their social media following. And you see it an awful lot. You can really build your own personal brand on social media platforms by, by

Yeah, having that kind of discourse online, but whether it's appropriate or not, um, having kind of clear guidance and boundaries in place, it is a gray area and we see an awful lot of it. And I think there's an interesting piece there around the type of the, the age and demographic of those types of healthcare professionals. So, um, much more established kind of slightly older generation consultants don't tend to.

engage in that type of online content, but a much younger generation, you've kind of grown up with it or that those kind of up and comers really do. And I don't know if you've kind of experienced that yourself.

sanjay (22:45.451)
No, I'm aware of the example you've given, and I think

that the, if you like the market place is much more complex. When I was your first client for your company, I asked you to build me a website and the website was there as the shop window into my private practice. There was some information about me, there was information about the conditions I treated and what I did and my contact information. It was my shop window, that's what you built for me and it was wonderful. The social media place now.

means that it seems to me that the medical, the healthcare practitioners in that space have now become commercial players on social media. So I'm not nearly as up to speed as you are on this, but I'm aware that it's possible to generate significant income by just being in social media, depending on the number of followers you have.

and so on. Now, you know, that, at that point, I think the social media platform has stopped being the shop window for the practitioner, it's become a commercial end in itself. And that's, I think, a new phenomenon. And I suppose in a sense, they're becoming media personalities just as the TV doctors were, and still are, you know, that's their area of practice, whether they practice clinical medicine and whether that is a...

significant source of income from them. I don't know, but my suspicion is that the social platform presence is what might be generating incomes. If I was a king of gynecology on TikTok, you know, I suspect that would lead to a significant income for me.

Ollie (24:39.332)
Yeah, not only through the patient inquiries that you'd get for additional revenue streams through some of those social media platforms themselves, like TikTok, if we'll play content creators, they'll reimburse them for creating that content once you reach a certain size of audience. And it did that very much dawned on me a few years ago that kind of.

that shift that took place from, you talked about the website being very much the shop window and it was, but we worked with a cosmetic surgeon that a while back, relatively renowned in London, who had not got a website for many years because they had built up their own following on Instagram and done very well with it. In fact, I think they had something like 90, 100,000 followers. And...

The commercial value of that following became very evident very quickly when we did build them a website and all we did was put up a holding page. It literally had their name and their logo and a contact form. It had no presence online. There's no way to search for it. It was just a very basic holding page. And as soon as it went live...

the inquiry form was just going off every other minute with inquiries and that was because this individual had built such an established following on social media. So yeah, from the patient side, I think it's got massive commercial benefits if you can really raise your personal brand on there, but whether or not and how you do that, if that is the best route to.

raising your kind of private practice I'm not so sure about. So this again segues quite nicely. So there's been a big increase in health information online and many people are very concerned about that. And I'm sure that you had that in your own individual practice. You'd see patients who were coming to you very informed, no doubt finding information, not just on Google, but on social media channels. So how did you...

Ollie (26:55.74)
guide patients in distinguishing credible sources and misinformation? Were there any kind of real common patient misconceptions or educational gaps that you would find within in gynaecology and women's health specifically?

sanjay (27:22.577)
What are the challenges of the healthcare practice?

sanjay (27:32.746)
with their information and knowledge that they had gathered before they walked into the room and then sieve through that and personalise it for the patient. And that's the biggest challenge. And there were occasions there where, you know, patients... And I know from my own example, you know, if I have a headache and I go online to look at sources of headache, I know...

that I will inevitably self-diagnose brain cancer. And it's easy to fall into that trap. We tend to want to agree with whatever's presented to us. And then to talk out of that scenario can be a challenge. And that's where the communication skills for the health practitioner have to come to before. And that's one side of it. The other side of it.

This is where again, I think the interaction with patients is changing all the time. It has to become more sophisticated. But the patients too, I think, need... And I think we're moving into that phase with social media now. I think the general public are developing a degree of skepticism with what they see and hear. There have been a lot of, outside the medical field, tragedies.

that were driven by social media. And I think the population's becoming aware that social media does carry a risk of harm and everything there isn't absolutely gospel. So the question you asked is what do I have to deal with and what we have to deal with is taking a general level of information that the patient walks into the room with and making it more personal for the individual patient and then discussing options.

Ollie (29:05.071)
Hmm.

sanjay (29:28.622)
for the future with the patient and then coming to an agreed sort of partnership type treatment plan or no treatment plan, but whatever the next step is. And that's where the challenge is, is personalizing it.

Ollie (29:42.652)
Absolutely. And I can imagine that's only exacerbated when you've got particularly sensitive topic areas like contraception or menopause, fertility, those sorts of areas where there is just a lot of noise. There's a lot of user generated content, a lot of patients on online forums talking about their own symptoms and giving advice to other patients. So I can appreciate how difficult that must be to navigate. Just bringing that back a bit just in terms of

your own interactions with pharma and device manufacturers. Are there any specific kind of promotional disease awareness campaigns that you've noticed recently that you think have had particular stopping power? So in the patient space, I think of Hurtility, who've been doing some notable advertising campaigns across a range of different formats.

there any other kind of companies in the medical space that you can think of that are of note within that side of things?

sanjay (31:04.53)
What are the most important things in the life of a patient?

and amazing to see them advertised on television now. You know, what they've done there is taken this sort of unspoken behind closed doors topic and opened it up, you know, in, I think, a hugely sensitive way, at the same time raising awareness of their own products. I think, to be honest, I'm quite impressed by it. In another area...

Ollie (31:13.189)
Yeah.

sanjay (31:35.938)
is dealing with your incontinence. Again, that's been done hugely well. My companies who produce incontinence products. So that's been done well, I would say. The other, yeah, and I think it's the sensitive way in which taboo subjects have been opened up.

Ollie (31:54.072)
Yeah, it's a great example.

sanjay (32:04.37)
to discussion and people then hopefully feel more empowered to go and seek help for conditions that they may have. Devices manufacturers I think have a difficult job. I think access to healthcare professionals now is more and more limited by our employers in the sense that it's the employers, the hospitals, the trusts want to look for devices.

that are economical, the financial driver is massive now. And the ability for individual healthcare practitioners to pick and choose amongst the devices is hugely limited. And the device, any new device coming to market has to demonstrate significant improvement from existing products to get a foothold.

and they have to come through procurement departments just to access us. And I think they've got a really uphill task. And that speaks to what we talked about earlier on, is, you know, what channel would they use? And I think that webinars and hands on examples of taking practitioners out using simulation technology, which is another new field for the use of devices.

sanjay (33:29.538)
give surgeons experience of their products on simulators or meeting other users. And that again, it takes us back right to the beginning, is a world away from the days when usually, well, either a man or woman, as a device, is representing, come along and say, Mr. Veers, have you seen the latest pair of forceps that we are releasing to market next week? And we're a world away from that. And for the better.

Ollie (33:59.108)
Yeah. So let's, uh, a contest of time. And let's try to wrap this up with this final question for you. If I am a, a device manufacturer or a pharma company, and I'm looking to target a gynecologist, uh, in today's world, what would be from your perspective? What do you think is the

best way to get in front of those audiences with what types of content. You mentioned webinars and things like that, but if you were going to give some advice to a healthcare, a pharma marketer in today's world, what is the best way to engage with a gynaecologist based on some other kind of standout interactions you've had either face to face or digital in the past?

sanjay (34:52.175)
I'd say start by looking at it from the healthcare practitioner's point of view. Define what separates your product from what is available in the market already. Give me some more information about how it benefits patients more than what's available. Put an economical context on it.

we are no longer able to spend, effectively, taxpayers' money in the health service, or people's own money in private practice, without an understanding of the economic consequences of that. And then approach us in a way and at a time when we are receptive. So bombarding isn't useful anymore.

We've talked about webinars, we've talked about hosting training opportunities or discussion spaces. I think partner with organisations that we trust. I think specialist societies are becoming massively important in this and the response, the relationship that healthcare practitioners have with their specialist societies is getting stronger and stronger and they're seen as trusted sources.

partner with them to come to us and resist the temptation to bombard us with easily accessed social media. I think that would prove to be hugely counterproductive.

Ollie (36:30.96)
think that's great advice. And I'm guessing the other one there that gets really, really badly violated is email. Although it has its usage, but partner with credible memberships, associations, societies, like you say, where there is already that trust and put it in front of you at a time that's not invasive when you're in practice rather than at home. Am I right in saying that? Yeah.

sanjay (36:57.778)
Absolutely so, yeah, yeah. You meet me in my professional space. Incidentally, you mentioned email. I mean, you know, almost every time I see that sort of an email, I might just look at the top line. And at that point, the only emotion that's generated me is irritation before I press the delete button.

Ollie (37:21.8)
I mean, to be fair to everyone else out there, we all get spam emails and we all have to do an awful lot of that. But look, thank you so much Sanjay for all of your insights today. That's been massively valuable and I think you will have opened the eyes and certainly kind of.

got rid of some misconceptions around some of the ways in which you should and can be getting in front of healthcare professionals for us marketers out there. I've been a really, really interesting guest to have on. So just want to thank you very much for your time. And if you've got any passing comments for our listeners, please let me know.

sanjay (38:02.989)
Thanks, Ali. It's been a pleasure.

Ollie (38:05.168)
Brilliant. Thanks, Sanjay. Speak soon. Bye bye.

sanjay (38:07.85)
Love you. Cheers Ollie.