Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

As recently as 2002, nearly 70% of U.S medical practices were owned by doctors. But now, over half of medical practices are owned by hospitals and the trend toward big medicine is expected to continue. The statistics come from the Medical Group Management Association data and suggest that big changes are in store for how health care is marketed and delivered.

Pharmaceutical marketers expect sales to increase going into 2011. While the largest increases will occur in emerging markets like China, consumers in the U.S. will be buying more medications, too. Overall, according to IMS Health, pharmaceutical companies will bring in an amount equivalent to US$880 billion in 2011, globally, which represents a growth rate of between 5-7%. All of this growth will likely be spurred by new ad campaigns.

Ad-ology Research recently updated their Industry Marketing Insights report for Neurologists. The following are the predicted Top 3 Opportunities/Challenges from the report for this industry for the upcoming 12 months:

* More neurologists are embracing the Internet, using blogs, wikis and forums to not only interact with others in their field, but also to communicate with patients.
* A 2009 report revealed that among patients ages 25 and over, ambulatory care for neurological disorders is significantly higher than for younger patients, particularly the 25-to-44 age group.
* While neurologists rank as the most-referred-to specialist in the United States, 77% of counties in the southeastern United States do not have a hospital with neurology services.

According to J.D. Power and Associates’ annual national pharmacy study, customers with higher satisfaction scores are financially beneficial to their pharmacies through increased rates of loyalty and advocacy and higher revenue per visit. Highly satisfied customers are three times more likely to say they “definitely will” return to their pharmacy and are ten times more likely to say they “definitely will” recommend their pharmacy, compared with customers with low satisfaction. “Pharmacies have an opportunity to grow their business and better position themselves for the future by improving satisfaction levels among their customers,” said Jim Dougherty, director of the healthcare practice at J.D. Power and Associates. Based on national average spending by pharmacy customers, a highly satisfied customer may generate $227 in additional prescription revenue each year.

Ad-ology Research recently updated their Industry Marketing Insights report for Clinical Laboratories.

The average time to bring a new drug to market is 10 years and the price tag often soars close to $1 billion by the time research, development and clinical trials are completed. This level of investment means that pharmaceutical firms will work hard to promote their offerings to consumers and physicians. Recently, pharmaceutical companies have been hard at work developing a new class of weight-loss drugs and are nearing review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The introduction of these drugs could be a game-changer in the U.S. consumer’s constant battle to maintain a health weight.