Doctor Discussion Guides For The Modern World

Brought to you by the FCB Health Engagement Strategy and Learning Design teams

The heart of consumer healthcare strategy is getting a patient to talk to their doctor to achieve the outcomes they need. For years, Doctor Discussion Guides (DDG) have been used to help facilitate this narrative between these two parties. A good discussion guide can ultimately help a patient and an HCP better understand their needs and treatment choices.  

Unfortunately, traditional discussion guides are stale and outdated in today’s tech-savvy climate. Guides are usually PDFs that must be printed and there is no way to track if they have been used in an appointment. So how can we better understand a patient’s need to make the guide more accessible and trackable? We need to take a more personalized and tech-forward approach that is grounded in principles that move people forward.

A guide should go beyond the realm of presenting health information to encouraging goal setting, ensuring patients’ personal treatment goals are being represented, and amplifying their voice to foster a personalized and collaborative treatment plan. 
 

Looking Outside of Healthcare

Outside the realm of pharma, consumer brands frequently engage their customers through interactive games, quizzes, and surveys. Although these brands don’t use doctor discussion guides, buying guides serve the same purpose—to educate consumers on their choices and provide them with the confidence to purchase large ticket items and services.
 

Kenmore, an American brand of household appliances, has structured their buying guides based on consumers’ specific needs (ex: time-saving appliances, capabilities, etc.), all hosted on their branded hub called Livemore. 
 

Casper reaches consumers through content that is adjacent to the product subject. Interactive quizzes about sleeping patterns, blog posts, stress management skills, and links to pajamas are hosted on their branded blog.
 

Sephora and Mercedes Benz have comparison widgets that allow consumers to evaluate different products side by side. 

Keeping these consumer strategies in mind, we can look towards incorporating some of these aspects into a Doctor Discussion Guide. all while ensuring we have the HCP/patient conversation at the forefront.
 

Incorporating Patient Learning Behaviors

In order to modify the current state of the typical DDG in healthcare marketing, it is imperative that we understand the process behind adult learning. By taking into consideration patient values and learning styles, we can begin to understand what modifications are needed to best resonate with these patients at the treatment stage they are in. By applying patient journey insights to an evidenced-based behavior change model as outlined below, we can identify a framework that would ensure we would drive to the action we want patients to take and can develop the discussion guide components we need to do that. 

Specifically, applying the Shared Decision-Making Model helps address patients’ key needs within decision guide design. Shared Decision Making (SDM) is a collaborative process that allows stakeholders to make healthcare decisions together. Patient and caregiver understanding is critical to establish clear disease/treatment expectations, strengthen adherence, and improve health outcomes.

The 4 components of the SDM can increase patient’s confidence, adherence, and disease outcomes:
 

Considering patient learning insights and the components of SDM, we identify three questions to address when creating engaging and actionable content:
 

A Revitalized Guide

An example of a guide that best aligns with the tech-savviness of the 21st Century and includes avenues of patient learning is Euflexxa, a treatment for osteoarthritis (OA).  

The Euflexxa guide starts with having patients “Take the Challenge” (assessment of pain and symptoms) through a web-based tool. The “Challenge” begins with the creation of a personalized avatar which will be used to showcase pain levels and symptoms the patient is experiencing. This includes gender, hair color, height, weight, skin tone, and age. These personalized avatars help people express emotions online with much more detail than checking boxes and writing vague responses. Patients may not feel as comfortable speaking to their pain in real-life, but feel empowered to do so with their online persona.
 

Users can interact with the assessment and increase or decrease a toggle bar based on their specific symptoms. Most of the questions surround the impact on QOL and daily wellbeing such as the effect OA has on daily exercise, getting out of the car, or even sitting. Patients may not realize the impact this disease has on their normal routine until “Taking the Challenge.” The ‘none to extreme’ bar gives patients a moment to reflect, puts themselves in the mindset of their daily routine and be able to explain their pain without having to write anything down and articulate it to their doctor. 
 

At the end of the “Challenge” patients are given the option to email, download, or text a copy of their complete personalized guide with their answers to the assessment. By giving patients multiple options, they are more likely to engage with what they are most familiar. If patients can pull up the guide at their appointment via their cell phone, they are more likely to do so.
 

In Conclusion

Although Euflexxa is great example of an interactive and tech-savvy discussion starter, it doesn’t quite hit all points when incorporating tailored patient learning needs and preferences. We have yet to see any pharma DDG examples that effectively marry these engagement aspects with tailored SDM components. 

Our goal is to keep leading the charge to a new and improved cutting edge DDG while keeping patients learning behavior and attitudes at the surface. We can do so by ensuring a DDG is not only tailored to meet specific learning needs, but also utilizes engaging technology that can help patients retain important health information. This will lead to thoughtful and productive conversations with their doctor and ultimately a treatment plan based on their needs.