Navigating Patient-First Engagement in an Escalating Privacy-Conscious Era

The healthcare industry thrives on innovation, and that includes the way it reaches patients. Traditionally, pharmaceutical marketers targeted patients via their treating HCPs and used expensive mass media to promote brands to consumers; however, the industry has shifted to more personalized direct-to-consumer marketing that leverages real-world patient medical data. As a result, our industry is undergoing a dramatic shift in the way consumer data is scrutinized for advertising purposes. Regulatory agencies at the federal, state, and local level are re-evaluating practices on the collection, usage, and protection of data for consumer healthcare targeting. 

State-level regulations like the “My Health, My Data Act” (MHMDA) which went into effect last month in Washington, and others on the horizon, are prioritizing patient rights to privacy over the rights of advertisers. At the heart of these new regulations lies individual empowerment. MHMDA, for example, emphasizes informed consent, requiring patients to explicitly opt-in to their data collection and usage. The growing challenge for pharma marketers: how to effectively reach target audiences in specific geographies while respecting patient privacy and adhering to evolving state-by-state regulations. 

Overcoming the growing challenge of privacy with technology

Geo-targeting is not a new marketing methodology, but it’s a critical strategy when targeting consumers. Marketers must consider the lifestyle, socioeconomic, demographic, and media preferences of their audience segments. For example, a Type 2 diabetic living in urban New Orleans, Louisiana is likely to be very different than an affluent Type 2 diabetic living in the suburbs of Spokane, Washington. Using integrated medical, geolocation and social determinants of health data yields more targeted creative, superior marketing reach, and better brand engagement versus a homogenous approach. In healthcare advertising there is no such thing as one size fits all. 

OptimizeRx holds two patents on a technology that comports with even the strictest of privacy acts including MHMDA. Micro-Neighborhood® Targeting (MNT) offers pharma marketers a way to reach consumers with the assurance they are not in violation of new and emerging regulations all while delivering a relevant, more cost-effective advertising campaign.  

Micro-Neighborhood targeting provides a deterministic alternative to traditional approaches with a level of granularity down to hyper local clusters for geo-targeting. Rather than targeting patients based on lookalike audiences, brands can leverage MNT and our patent-pending deterministic ID resolution technology, ensuring ads reach and engage a diverse set of patients, regardless of where they live or their preferred media.  

OptimizeRx empowers pharma marketers to navigate the evolving data privacy landscape while still reaching the intended audience for their brand during critical touchpoints of the healthcare journey. Micro-Neighborhood Targeting was designed with privacy in mind and reflects our commitment to patient privacy and our clients’ goal of better health outcomes.

Learn more about  our technology and privacy-safe, compliant approach.