Now, use patient-level data to measure advertising-media effectiveness

A new Media Innovations Division within SDI Health (Plymouth Meeting, PA) aims to apply the same patient-level data (PLD) used for measuring market trends in prescribing and patient care to how those patients are affected by, among other things, direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. This would be of highest use to media buyers who might want to know, for example, the television-viewing habits of diabetes patients, but can also be useful for physician-based patient interactions, adherence programs and other types of patient interactions.

“Historically, media effectiveness has been measured by primary research—doing telemarketing campaigns to consumers and asking them to recall their impressions,” says David Nussbaum, VP of the new division. “Now, we can provide insights based on true patient and provider behavior.”

SDI Health is one of the pioneers in matching patient healthcare records (from hospitals or clinics) with prescription usage (from retail pharmacies) over time. All these types of data go into a “de-identification” process that matches datasets but removes patient identification, per HIPAA requirements. The new service, called HealthRatings, makes these results available to clients via a Web portal. “This addresses two of the most challenging issues for advertising pharmaceutical brands: How do I reach the right patient targets and what is my campaign ROI,” says Nussbaum.