The Growth of Healthcare Sales Online

Healthcare is a fast moving industry, with new treatments and medicines being developed continuously. To keep up with the fast pace of the healthcare industry, healthcare companies and medical professionals are moving from traditional methods to online resources and new technology. We have put together some essential healthcare marketing statistics below:

• In the US a staggering seventy two percent of physicians carry smart phones, ninety five percent of whom use their smart phones to download medical information.
• The number one topic doctors look up on their smart phones is prescription drugs. This means that healthcare companies need to design their applications for the small screen.
• Thirty four percent of physicians go online with their patients in the exam room.
• Eighty percent of nurses refer patients to health related online resources and will direct patients to healthcare websites they trust.
• Fifty three percent of people polled said that information they found online led them to ask their physician new questions, and patients are now more likely to be engaged advocates in their own care.
• Forty four percent of women will evaluate a prescription before they decide to fill it.
• Twenty eight percent of people who visit health and wellness websites are fifty five plus, showing it's not just the young who access online resources.
• Seventeen percent of physicians prefer an in-person sales rep, compared to the forty one percent who prefer online sales. The other forty one percent of physicians prefer a mix of in person sales reps and online.
• An estimated eight million sales call didn't happen in the last year as more physicians refused to see pharmaceutical sales representatives.
• Consumers who visit pharmaceutical product website are nearly three times more likely to request prescriptions by name than the average US citizen.
• The health insurance provider Kaiser Permanente stated that more than 2.6 million emails are sent do doctors from their members per quarter along with more than two million prescriptions being refilled. In addition patient-physician email correspondence was associated with better quality scores.
• The adherence rate for patients using a pill bottle cap called GlowCaps, with built in reminders, was ninety eight percent, compared to the average adherence rate of seventy one percent. These intelligent pill caps use audio reminders along with an SMS service to remind patients to take their medication.
• The world's largest patient-centric and medication monitoring service, iGuard, found that ninety seven percent of their users where retained after eighteen months. They also had four hundred drugs listed on the website for consumer feedback, showing that giving patients access to a valuable resource pays dividends.

Physicians, healthcare professionals and patients alike are looking to online resources at an ever increasing rate. The clear message to healthcare organizations and pharmaceutical companies is that an online presence is essential in today's technologically advanced environment.