Dr TikTok will see you now

Social media is increasingly seen as a welcome source of advice for younger patients and particularly those with chronic conditions. Lucy Ireland, Partner in Hall & Partners’ healthcare division, outlines the challenges this presents for pharma brands.

As Generation Z starts to engage with healthcare services, global challenges in accessing doctors and nurses mean that Dr TikTok and Nurse Facebook are becoming major players in their experience of healthcare.

Patient Trendscoping: What You Need To Know About Patients of the Future reveals that the always-available Dr TikTok and Nurse Facebook have become primary providers of information for millions of younger patients, who feel that the existing services fail to support them, or even dismiss their symptoms.  

In the UK, for example, more than six million people are turning to a new generation of influencers on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok for help with chronic conditions or for more general healthcare information. In the US, it’s nearly 60 million. 

Globally, 33% of GenZ and 26% of millennials (compared to 5% of Baby Boomers) will use social media to discuss illness. For GenZ, the top platform is TikTok, followed by Instagram and Twitter, although older groups will turn to Facebook first. 

And the picture is even starker when it comes to patients of all ages with chronic conditions, with 30% globally not seeing their doctor as a regular information source, rising to 63% for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) sufferers, with 29% of IBD patients using specific groups on social media and 28% relying on online influencers. 

When they do visit a doctor, 29% of US GenZ and 32% of Millennials are taking charge and asking to be prescribed based on information they have read on a website, and 20% of GenZ are asking to be given a treatment they had heard about from another patient or influencer. This compares to just 7% and 4%, respectively, for Baby Boomers.

Dissatisfaction with current provision

One key reason why younger patients, in particular, are seeking out alternative sources of healthcare information is that, across all generations and in all countries, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of the health service. 

Half of patients feel frustrated that they do not get enough time with doctors (46% globally, 49% in the UK, and 42% in the US); that they sometimes lack empathy (43% globally, 41% in the UK, and 40% in the US); and that they are not answering their questions clearly (15% globally, 12% in the UK, and 11% in the US said they struggled to understand what a medical professional said, due to complicated medical language, particularly when it comes to complex diseases such as IBD). 

Another cause in the breakdown of the patient-doctor relationship is discrimination, 16% of people in the US have felt discriminated against by a healthcare professional (14% globally) because of their age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or weight.  

The figure is even higher among Black/African Americans, where 26% have felt discriminated against by a healthcare provider. The causes of discrimination can be varied, however, with a third attributing it to their ethnicity, while other common causes of discrimination include age (31%), weight (23%), and health choices (23%).

Ultimately, one in four people in the UK and US (26% in UK and 22% in the US) feel they have been dismissed and not taken seriously by a medical professional when discussing their symptoms. This is even higher for people with some harder to diagnose conditions, such as fibromyalgia (51% globally).   

Embracing the new landscape

The increased reliance on social media for health information presents challenges for pharmaceutical brands and healthcare professionals for a number of reasons. 

Firstly, social media isn’t always accurate. While there are doctor influencers, not all influencers are medically trained and the advice they give can be incorrect. Often, it’s provided by another sufferer with the best intentions, but treatments do need to be adapted to each individual.

While a more informed patient can help doctors and nurses answer concerns and queries accurately, patients demanding inappropriate or potentially risky treatments can also be hard to manage.

Secondly, there’s a challenge to know what’s being said and where. Many of these groups are private – whether the platform is TikTok, Facebook, or WhatsApp. If companies don’t know what’s being said, they can’t amplify or correct. Many are tracking Twitter because it’s public, but while that’s a top five social media platform, it’s much smaller than the likes of TikTok. 

Thirdly, even tracking who key influencers are for each disease category can be hard, because the rules that apply to personal health data are extremely strict. In some markets, the regulations mean it’s very difficult to track individual influencers.

Fourthly, this is a challenging space for pharma brands. There are very strict regulations on what brands can and can’t say about treatments and efficacy, rules that change by market. Typically, everything gets signed off and every last i and every last t is crossed before messages see the light of day. Influencer marketing and social media are more real-time and add an element of unpredictability into the mix.

Nonetheless, pharma companies do need to adapt, and many are now making the move to a more omnichannel approach to their communications. 

To do so, they need a proper segmentation of their marketplace and the people that use their products. They also need to understand the needs of each generation. Some have put a toe in the water of digital communication with instructional videos, but that’s not the demand for every generation. While GenZ will be happy with a video, Gen X are typically more comfortable with a printed instruction manual.

Learning to navigate this space will require a detailed breakdown of audiences and influencers. They need clear rules on the generational differences and demands if brands are to become comfortable and effective in the social media space.

They will also need to learn to use more intelligible language and not lapse into the words of the experts in white coats. Information needs to be concise and easy to understand, particularly on social media.

Ultimately, brands need to evolve better communication between patient and healthcare professional. Being more patient centric and taking a ‘with the patient’ approach rather than the traditional ‘for the patient’ is likely to be more successful.

About the author

Image

Lucy Ireland has worked in the pharmaceutical market research space for 23 years, leading research in the UK, USA, and Hong Kong. She is a multi-methodologist who has led syndicated and custom research teams, as well as the development of new methodologies within quantitative and secondary research. Ireland is passionate about innovation within the healthcare market research space. She began her journey in market research at Isis Research (which became Synovate Health and now Ipsos health), before learning a lot about what doctors talk about online at medeConnect (part of Doctors.net.uk). Ireland joined Hall & Partners in 2013.