Digital KOLs
If a particularly important and digitally well-connected HCP tweeted about your new data today, and assuming 50% of their HCP followers retweeted that, and assuming 50% of those followers’ followers also retweeted, how far and fast would your data message spread, even within just 24 hours?
These are the sort of digital KOL metrics we should be using to help identify, understand, and engage with the right digital KOLs.
And by digital KOLs we don’t just mean those that are tweeting a lot! We mean anyone with the power to impact your work in the digital realm, whether they be a leading clinician, patient advocate, nurse practitioner, or even a health-focused youtuber active in a rare disease.
You should also include new vistas, such as eHealth experts who are getting involved in apps and wearables that help patients manage their chronic diseases.
Identifying the most important digital experts is just the first step. Because even within a therapy area, digital KOLs have very different online characteristics – those who tend to initiate online conversations, those that tend to create new content, those that tend to propagate existing data, etc.
That’s where value-add services such as “phenotyping” then come into play – by phenotyping and segmenting your experts into different buckets driven by their digital characteristics and propensity for online interaction, you can collaborate and engage with them on scientific issues in much more effective ways.
And only after all this should you think about “engagement”, with all its many challenges – from ensuring compliance in all engagements to figuring out the best way to collaborate with digital experts on important medical issues that affect patient well-being.
Costantino Ciotti
Services & Innovations
+44 (0)20 8191 9823
