mADizin: The Future of Personalized Healthcare Communication

Personalized medicine needs personalized communication

The grand vision of modern medicine is to combine technology and science in such a way that patients receive a therapy that is tailored individually to them. At the same time, side effects should be minimized and cost efficiency taken into account.

The term “personalized medicine” describes this fundamental change in the treatment of patients. It is associated with the hope of developing new drugs and therapies for complex diseases such as cancer or dementia, which have been difficult to treat as of now.

One fits one

A good example of personalized medicine is CAR-T cell therapy, an individual type of tumor treatment: T-cells are taken from the patient’s blood, selected and multiplied in the laboratory. They are then genetically modified so that they form antigen receptors on the cell surface that are directed against cancer-specific surface proteins. Finally, the modified cells are returned to the patient.

This description already shows that there is a great need for communication with the various target groups, such as patients, doctors and other stakeholders in the healthcare system. Because this is the only way to communicate how the therapy works.

The “one fits one” approach of such treatments makes a similarly individualized approach necessary in the marketing of these individualized products.

From personalized medicine to personalized mADicine

Marketing communication should transfer the principle of personalized medicine to its own activities – because innovative approaches such as CAR-T cell therapy cannot be communicated using mass communication and the scattergun approach. Personalized communication solutions are required here – and these can best be implemented with the corresponding ad technology. The term “personalized mADicine” is meant to sum up this approach.

Until now, personalized targeting on the internet has mainly been implemented with the help of third-party cookies. This means that when you are on a website that displays advertising, cookies are placed on your computer by a third-party advertiser, even though you are not actually on that advertiser’s website.

Data protection sends its best wishes – hence all the effort regarding cookie notices that have to be confirmed when you land on any website.

However, there are a few catches with cookies: many people have ad blockers set in their browsers so that no advertising is displayed. In addition, it doesn’t give users a good feeling when a third party, who they may not know, saves a file on their end device without the user really being aware of it – so cookies also have an image problem.

The end of cookie crumbs

Fortunately, there are several cookie alternatives. Data analysis and machine learning can be used to analyze behavior patterns and preferences on the web without having to make the individual user transparent.

For the healthcare sector however, a certain degree of transparency is necessary, as the aim is to reach and address only a very specific group of people for certain diseases and therapeutic approaches.

In my opinion there are two possible approaches here: an ID solution and contextual targeting – both tailored to the specific needs of the healthcare market.

In principle, ID solutions can be thought of as groups (e.g. people affected by a certain disease or doctors specializing in a certain field) having their own ID that covers their specific needs, acts as a single sign-on and can thus be used as a connecting element between web platforms, publishers and companies.

The latter in particular benefit from such solutions, as it is often not a question of displaying plain advertising, but showing the target group the right content at the right time and in the right place – for example as part of a patient program or a research for study results.

Contextual targeting on the other hand, is not as personalized as an ID solution. However, it uses the analysis of larger amounts of data to identify content that users are currently interacting with and to play relevant advertising and suitable content based on that. This form of targeting does not have to rely on personal user data but is instead based on the user’s interests. For example, people interested in a lipodissolve-injection would only be shown suitable content relating to the lipodissolve-injection if they are also looking for information on this topic – it could hardly be more tailored and relevant than this.

ID-identifying the right communication measures – advertising IDs

The path to the goal of personalized communication in a cookieless world is called: advertising IDs – i.e. a unique, anonymized identifier for tracking user behavior. The challenge here is to make these solutions device-independent but omnichannel.

The “European netID Foundation” has taken on this challenge and developed a standardized login system called “netID”, which covers various web platforms in different industries (e.g. Joyn, GMX, Web.de). The netID is used to identify users across different platforms and to create usage profiles. These usage profiles can be used to launch appropriate advertising.

healthy.ID – real personalized mADicine

For the German-speaking healthcare market, an ID solution specifically developed to meet the needs of the industry has been available for two years to address medical professionals: The healthy.ID. This ID solution is consent-based and linked to a professional certificate – and therefore also complies with the Medicinal Products Act, which is crucial for healthcare marketing.

This ensures that advertising for prescription drugs, for example, is only displayed to people who are authorized to do so under the Medicinal Products Act. Thanks to frequency capping, messages can also reference on each other and be used for consistent storytelling. This enables a target-group specific approach and personalized communication at user level – without any cookie crumbs.