Is omnichannel right for rare diseases?

In theory, the principles of omnichannel – personalised content through the right channels to maximise customer experience – are applicable to rare diseases. In practice though, going ‘full throttle’ is unlikely to be the right approach.

Barriers such as limited funds and resources, a small pool of healthcare professional (HCP) customers and a diverse range of multidisciplinary stakeholders (consultants, nurses, allied HCPs, care advisors and crucially, patients) often mean an omnichannel approach can seem like a large undertaking for a potentially smaller customer base. This calls for a more specialised approach.

1. Map customer personas for rare disease stakeholders
An understanding of how your audience engages underpins an omnichannel strategy. However, due to the limited pool of HCPs with expertise in each rare disease, defining different customer personas within a singular HCP group may be futile. Instead, understanding educational needs, content preferences and engagement of different members of a multidisciplinary team will allow you to tailor your strategy from a holistic perspective.

The rare disease stakeholder group you cannot forget are the patients and caregivers themselves – their high levels of expertise and engagement make them true co-decision-makers in their care. Patients are influencers, so ensuring they have the right, accessible information can support efforts for the product to be integrated into the care pathway.

2. Medical strategy: align and refocus
It’s easy to assume that rare disease communications are always underexposed, but in competitive markets, content can be over-saturated. The rare disease field is continually evolving with new research and emerging treatments. Amid this influx of content, in our experience, messaging that aligns to your objectives, meets the communities’ current education needs and is proactively shared at the optimal time (rather than last minute) will cut through the noise.

3. Pilot first and iterate, iterate, iterate…
In rare diseases, piloting an omnichannel strategy is not just advisable – it’s necessary. Given the wide range of stakeholders and ever-changing landscape, it’s important to stay agile and adaptable. With limited funds and resource, there’s little room for error. Piloting helps identify what resonates best with the audience by tracking key metrics over time – in a field where every interaction counts, piloting is worth your time.

4. Choose the right channels and formats
Working in rare diseases where time and resource is tight, content must be delivered through the right channels to ensure engagement and high return on investment. Extensive market research into channel preferences of all customers may be a step too far, but are there alternatives? Over our time working on medical communications in rare diseases the importance of collaboration has come through front and centre. Rare disease HCPs often therefore prefer HCP-led or peer-to-peer exchange activities, so incorporating these is a must. To gather insights on HCPs’ channel preferences, why not make the most of these well-connected rare disease communities and engage with key stakeholders who can usually speak to the formats most preferred by their colleagues.

The power of word of mouth also extends to gathering interest in and engagement with your omnichannel tactics. Nevertheless, maximising reach through advertising remains crucial – but in rare diseases a database of HCPs who have given e-permissions to receive promotional content is often lacking. Starting early and exploring every avenue to get sign-ups is crucial.

5. Be selective in innovation
With a rise of ‘digital native HCPs’ there are higher expectations nowadays to provide on-demand, user-friendly content for self-directed learning. However, where there is often a lack of best practice guidelines or publication of management approaches for rare diseases, collaboration between stakeholders is paramount and coming together face-to-face tends to facilitate better sharing of learnings. Any innovative approaches you use should keep this critical objective in mind, and who’s to say that artificial intelligence couldn’t support this in rare diseases in the future?

If done right, innovation can also help differentiate content in an over-saturated market and build your position as partners to the rare disease community. A stand-out congress booth kitted with lighting, sounds and virtual reality is a one-time investment, but will it truly have contributed to long-term HCP education or brand perception? Compare this to an ongoing educational commitment to HCPs, providing them with content focused on improving their clinical practice and patient outcomes. Ultimately, to work in rare diseases, an omnichannel strategy must keep the end goal in mind – improving the lives of patients.