Developing a sponsored resource hub

Objectives

To support Sun Pharma’s entry into the UK primary care market and capture market share for their subcutaneous sumatriptan autoinjector by informing GPs and educating them about the patient benefits, highlighting when to use and which patients will benefit most.

Our approach

To better understand the primary care Rx landscape for migraine, and thus the challenges faced by Sun Pharma, we conducted a snapshot survey to determine GPs’ level of comfort diagnosing and managing migraine, as well as their awareness of the treatment options available. Over 130 GPs responded revealing that, despite seeing migraine patients frequently and high confidence-levels in diagnosing migraine, awareness of treatment options was suboptimal. Specifically:

• GPs are poorly informed about the different forms of sumatriptan available (tablets, wafer, nasal, injectable)
• GPs lack the confidence to initiate injectable triptans in difficult patient cases, preferring to defer to specialists
• Self-injection training and patient concerns relating are barriers to increased GP prescribing
• Over 80% of GPs desire access to independent migraine education to improve their knowledge

In response, we developed a (sponsored) digital education and marcoms programme to improve GP management of difficult migraine cases and reduce unnecessary referral to specialists, arm GPs with the knowledge and confidence to prescribe/initiate injectable triptans and equip GPs with resources to show patients how to self-administer and overcome concerns about injections.

Combining use of PulseToday and PULSE 365 to ensure optimum campaign reach and engagement, the programme was designed to drive GPs firstly to an independent CPD education module on migraine -hosted via PULSE 365, then to a dedicated hub on PulseToday hosting further resources for GPs on injectable triptan therapy. This created a large community of educated GPs who would be more likely to prescribe injectable sumatriptan, and which Sun Pharma would be uniquely positioned to benefit from.

Outcome

• 2,000+ engagements in four months
• 55,000+ ad impressions via Pulse
• 31% email open rate

The success of the sumatriptan campaign has resulted in Sun Pharma extending the programme to include their second primary care product (rosuvastatin sprinkles) and selecting Pulse as their preferred channel for promoting subsequent primary care launches.