Medical information (MI) services are playing a vital role in the life sciences industry’s response to COVID-19. MI channels, such as call centers, email and websites, offer healthcare providers (HCPs), patients and consumers a balanced, reliable source of information about vaccines, treatments and devices so they have the confidence to prescribe and/or embrace them during this healthcare crisis. Whether callers need information about dosing, usage or risks or they just want to find a product coupon, MI experts have the answers.

However, the pandemic has also brought to light vulnerabilities in the MI services workflow that need to be addressed.

Prior to the pandemic, medical information teams were already facing the dual challenges of managing a growing number of requests from new channels for various products in multiple formats, coupled with rising expectations for high-quality customer service.

Medical Information experts were expected to respond to requests in near real-time, sometimes around the clock, with accurate insights that met all industry regulations. They also had to identify, capture and promptly report every query that might represent an adverse reaction or product quality complaint so manufacturers could respond accordingly. Any delays or missed events could result in safety risks, compliance issues and possible negative impact to the product brand.

The arrival of the pandemic is bringing added pressures for MI teams to respond promptly and succinctly to a deluge of inquiries given the heightened public scrutiny of COVID-19 vaccines. It is also increasing awareness of the need for more agility in MI workflows. Unlike other treatments, the sheer volumes around COVID-19 products dwarf anything companies have ever experienced previously.

Transformation has begun

Along with more requests and accelerated timelines, manufacturers are experiencing unexpected shifts in the types of inquiries being made. While some products are seeing COVID-related surges in requests, other non-COVID-related products are experiencing lower volumes because sales reps haven’t been able to actively promote them. That has left some MI teams overwhelmed, while others have more resources than they need.

The negative impact on customer experience, and inefficient use of MI staff is causing companies to rethink how MI services can be more adaptive in the future—though this transformation won’t be easy.

Although it is the first and only in-bound source of customer engagement, medical information is often considered a “cost center” rather than a revenue generator or valuable source of key information, which means that it tends to be late to adopt new innovations. However, the confluence of risks and inefficiencies is causing many organizations to look for opportunities for improvement.

IQVIA’s Medical Information experts have been working closely with clients to help them navigate this transition, so they can better address the pressures on MI that have emerged since the pandemic began.

Through these engagements, they have identified three key lessons that can help clients ease into this transformation and achieve time and costs savings while maintaining quality and compliance and improving the customer experience.

Lesson #1: Plan for unexpected volume surges

A sudden uptick in inquiries happens all the time in Medical Information, and these volume spikes are unpredictable. A product recall, a sudden increase in infections, and other unexpected events can trigger a flood of inquiries. And when these events find their way to social media, that surge can occur in a matter of hours.

Most MI teams are not designed for that level of adaptability, and smaller teams can become inundated with requests, while customers are left waiting for a reply. It’s an outdated and ineffective way to manage these unpredictable but inevitable shifts in demand.

In response, many manufacturers are adopting a more flexible support model where MI agents are trained to respond across multiple product types and countries so they can pick up the added workload when needed. Some are also cross-training call center reps to handle local adverse event intake steps, to create additional agility and productivity in the workforce.

This approach requires a more robust hiring and training program, to ensure teams can rapidly adapt to changing demands. With it come multiple benefits:

• Risk reduction - reducing the possibility that teams won’t be able to handle sudden surges in customer inquiries.
• Smaller, agile teams - allowing manufacturers to rely on fewer, cross-trained MI experts, knowing they can accommodate changes in inquiry volume and tasks.
• More skilled workforce - where additional training and support experiences broaden and improve their skills, resulting in a more adaptive and engaged workforce.
• Better customer experience - when agents can handle calls for multiple products, it can shorten customer response time, and accelerate reporting of adverse events and product complaints.

Lesson #2: Take advantage of remote working

The pandemic has forced organizations to embrace remote working models, whether they wanted to or not. That led them to recognize the many benefits that such models bring to an organization.

For MI services, remote workers are proving that agents don’t need to be clustered together in a central hub under constant supervision in order to excel in their jobs. Life sciences companies have been able to provide them with technology enabling them to answer calls and fulfill inquiries remotely, and managers are able to use digital performance management systems to monitor their activity, and track key performance indicators (KPIs) including call volume, length, response time, customer satisfaction levels and other key metrics.

This shift requires a change in management practices, which can be challenging for some contact centers. Managers have been accustomed to leading and monitoring by walking the floor and responding to real-time questions or noticing agents in need. In a remote environment, they need to be more intentional in how they engage with workers, and find new ways to provide feedback, address knowledge gaps, and bring the team together for training and team-building exercises using virtual meeting platforms to connect.

Managers who excel in a remote working environment can generate several business advantages:

• Cost savings. When manufacturers leverage remote working medical information experts, they can shrink their real estate costs, choose from more low-cost regions and enable one manager to oversee a larger, more diverse workforce.
• Easier recruiting. For manufacturers that deal with customers from multiple countries, remote working MI experts can be located around the world to accommodate different languages and time zones. This reduces the ongoing challenge and cost of finding individual candidates in a single location who speak multiple languages.
• Greater retention. Giving employees the flexibility to work from home, and opening recruiting to a wider geography can improve retention.

Lesson #3: Automate (some) customer engagements

Ten years ago, efforts to automate customer conversations were largely viewed as failures. Rigidly designed chatbots often weren’t smart enough to interpret natural language or to respond to more than a few, basic, highly scripted inquiries. Healthcare providers expected MI experts—with a thorough understanding of each product—to fulfill their inquiries via human-to-human direct interaction.

The current generation of AI-powered, conversational agents is remarkably improved. These friendly, smart, and deeply intuitive AI agents can respond to many questions, in an engaging conversational manner—a capability that grows over time as they continue to learn. Solutions specifically designed for the life sciences industry leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to interpret questions and provide highly specific responses to many customer inquiries. They can be trained in relevant therapeutic taxonomies and are also able to access historical communications with a specific customer to make each interaction more personalized by referencing past discussions and asking follow-up questions.

These automated solutions are adding value for manufacturers, human MI experts and customers in a several ways:

• Accommodating customers who prefer automated options. According to Forrester, 79% of customers choose self-serving over human-assisted support channels. A recent Accenture study shows that 87% of HCPs now want either all-virtual or a mix of virtual and in-person interactions even after the pandemic ends (Reinventing Relevance, Accenture, 2020). These customers recognize that when automated solutions work, they can get the answers they need in less time, with less effort.
• MI human experts can focus on more complex inquiries. Conversational agents can be leveraged to handle simple repetitive inquiries, freeing human experts to spend more time on more complicated or high-risk inquiries. In this way, manufacturers make better use of agents’ skills, while accelerating response time for all customers.
• Manufacturers can rely on smaller teams. When conversational AI agents are part of the agent mix, manufacturers may be able to more easily rely on smaller teams, which lowers their costs without adding risk to the workflow. AI agents can also be available ‘on-demand’, 24/7, to further enhance customer satisfaction.

Don’t fall behind

Trying to drive change in medical information services has always been a challenge, but COVID has presented an opportunity to evolve and innovate. MI teams need more efficient ways to train and utilize staff, and they need the support of innovative technologies to help them manage workflows while still providing a very high level of customer service and meeting regulatory requirements. When MI teams leverage the lessons learned, they can create more adaptable processes that ensure optimized customer experiences, making better use of their highly skilled human experts while cutting the cost and risk associated with consistently excellent service delivery.