Piers French, Senior Strategist at Ashfield Healthcare Communications, explains how Ashfield are developing personalisation of content to audience needs using a multidisciplinary, insight-led approach.

Recorded 1 February 2017 at a MedComms Networking event in Oxford. Produced by NetworkPharma.tv

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ABSTRACT:

Personalisation starts with the most basic form of customisation, in which a consumer can add their name to a product. Digital technology allows an increasing degree of personalisation, from users being able to customise their experience, e.g. in interactive storytelling, through intuitive navigation, in which website navigation is built around users’ needs, to personalised experiences, in which the product or experience will feel like it was purpose-built for the user.

Personalisation can be enormously helpful in overcoming today’s challenges in providing information for healthcare professionals – chiefly the constant flow of information competing for their attention. Ashfield have been developing personalisation in several different ways in recent years. For example, its Living with Alzheimer’s campaign uses interactive learning to allow patients and healthcare professionals to access content relevant to their experience or practice. Since 2011, Ashfield have been helping Nestlė Nutrition Institute educate a global audience of healthcare professionals across a range of disciplines, continuously researching the audience, re-evaluating audience behaviour and bringing digital innovation into the process.

Ashfield take an insight-led approach to developing personalisation, first segmenting an audience to help understand how its needs may differ, for example by profession and experience, then looking at key drivers and issues regarding educational needs, and gathering further insights through audience surveys and face-to-face interviews. Increasingly, Ashfield expect to incorporate machine learning, using algorithms, to complement direct conversations with patients and professionals in meeting the audience needs.

Written by Penny Gray, Freelance Medical Writer

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We are building a library of free webcasts, like this one, for the global MedComms Community and others at http://www.networkpharma.tvhttp://www.networkpharma.tv and we’d welcome your suggestions for new topics and speakers.

Full details of this MedComms Networking event are at http://medcommsnetworking.com/event85.html

Piers’s presentation (PDF format) is at http://medcommsnetworking.com/presentations/french_010217.pdf

Pier’s Linkedin page is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/piersfrench/

More about Ashfield Healthcare Communications can be found at http://www.ashfieldhealthcare.com/

Filming and technical direction by Mario Crispino, Freelance Cameraman & Editor

[For the avoidance of doubt: this video is intended to be freely accessible to all. Please feel free to share and use however you like. Cheers, Peter Llewellyn, Director NetworkPharma Ltd and Founder of the MedComms Networking Community activity at http://www.medcommsnetworking.com]