Balancing Data Innovation and Privacy in Healthcare Marketing

Balancing data innovation with privacy in healthcare marketing

Pharma marketers face a complex regulatory landscape, including HIPAA and NAI guidelines, as well as increasingly restrictive state legislation. Consent is becoming the central framework for all data decisions, requiring marketers to understand not just if they can target an audience but when and where it’s appropriate to do so. 

Ezra Suveyke, CPO and CTO at PulsePoint, recently spoke with Mark Bard, co-founder of the DHC Group, about balancing data innovation with privacy in healthcare marketing in the webinar “DHCG Disruptive Dose.” Their conversation explores the crucial distinction between technical capabilities and ethical implementation. 

 “Consent drives everything.”

According to Suveyke, innovation starts with understanding consent. There is a lot of nuance here beyond a website visitor simply clicking to accept cookies.  

“Just because you have the consent to put a branded message in front of a doctor doesn’t mean you have the right to put that same branded message in front of a doctor when they’re reading an article about walking their dog,” Suveyke explained. “You have to understand context.”

Consent should be explicit—it establishes and shows that you have a direct relationship with the individual. For instance, you must know there is an increased benefit to an HCP to opt into relevant content about a drug they might prescribe. Some questions to ponder:

• Can I find you elsewhere, yes or no? 
• And when I find you elsewhere, can I include your name in a report that is about to be sent to a pharmaceutical company?
• Does it make sense not even to put an ad in front of this individual? 

“That is central to every single data decision we make as an organization,” Suveyke said. “And that should also be the center to any organization thinking about entering this space.”

AI is nothing without the right inputs

For AI to truly be a boon to pharma marketers, the data quality must be of the highest standard. We all know the saying, “garbage in, garbage out,” when it comes to AI. A human is still required to collect, normalize, and present the info to the AI application or tool. If not, the outputs can be inaccurate, biased, or downright risky. 

Suveyke doesn't mince words here. 

“Those machines are dumb,” he said. “They have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing or whether they got something right or wrong without context.” 

Be genuine with your intent

If any partner in an individual brand’s digital media supply chain fails on the privacy front, it can violate HCP or consumer trust. Often, this comes down to the intent behind the marketing communication. 

”Your intent is effectively some sort of driving entity or governance,” Suveyke said. “As long as you are genuine with your intent—Did we help you? Was that helpful?—then, that has to be the driving force behind all of this.”

To listen to the full webinar, click here. 

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