In the nearly 15 years that we’ve been writing about EHR and health IT here at Healthcare IT Today, one of the most interesting topics we cover is pharma advertising inside an EHR or other health IT software product. It’s a topic that will likely never disappear since Pharma has a lot of money to spend in order to get the information about their drugs in the hands of clinicians.
When I look back at our history of covering pharma advertising in EHR software, I think the height of the conversation happened when Practice Fusion announced that they were offering a free EHR software for all doctors. Of course, the reaction to this announcement was obvious when doctors asked the question, “How are you going to pay for that?” While Practice Fusion never fully answered the question, the assumption was that it would be on the back of pharma advertising in the EHR and potentially the value of Practice Fusion selling the data in the EHR (de-identified I’m sure).
While there’s more to the Practice Fusion story, the ending was Practice Fusion selling to Allscripts for $100 Million. Since the acquisition, Allscripts has decided to change Practice Fusion from the previous Free EHR software model to a paid subscription model. Since this announcement, I really haven’t seen any EHR companies that have explored the pharma advertising option within the EHR. Sure, we have a few that offer pharmacy coupons in their ePrescribing solution, but that’s about as close as we’ve come to pharma advertising in the EHR. If you know of others I’ve missed, I’d love to hear about them.
A newer company called Doceree sees this as an opportunity and they’re looking to enter this space. Their goal is to offer physician marketing solutions including pharma marketing across a wide range of places including the EHR and Telehealth. They want to offer programmatic marketing across a network of physician only platforms.
To learn more about their plans, I sat down with Dr. Harshit Jain, Founder & CEO at Doceree Inc to discuss pharma marketing and Doceree’s approach to it. We also talk about how COVID-19 has impacted the work of pharma advertising (ie. Pharma Reps can’t visit offices) and we talk about how he envisions pharma marketing can work inside an EHR or other health IT software like telehealth. Plus, we talk about how he sees this as a way for healthcare organizations that are struggling to be able to survive and the international perspective on pharma marketing and advertising. I also ask him about the ethical implications of pharma advertising in an EHR or health IT solution.
Find out more about Doceree and their efforts to bring pharma advertising to EHR and telehealth in the interview below:
Learn more about Doceree: https://www.doceree.com/
This interview is part of the #HealthIT100in100
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