Patient Opinion Leaders (POLs): Is this phenomenon here to stay?

Patient Opinion Leader (POL) is one more jargon floated by pharma marketeres. And lot of people are jumping into the bandwagon too early. Let’s face it. Presently in India, POL does not exist and we can comfortably assume that POL will not have any significant impact in forseable future.

Firstly, let’s start with “Patient’s Opinion”. Here we are talking about patient’s opinion on Rx medicine. (POLs or whatever you may call it, can influence personal medical testing devices category - for example, which glucometer to buy). We must accept the fact that patients are merely a consumer who have almost no say in deciding which Rx medicine is appropriate for him/her. It is entirely doctor’s prerogative because patients are not equipped with medical knowledge to make the right choice. We may argue that today’s patients are well-read, net savvy, health conscious consumer but still patient’s opinion should not or rather can not directly impact the sale of the brand. At the most, patients’ can share their personal experiences about managing a disease which might be helpful to other patients, but their opinions cannot be taken into consideration when it comes to buying Rx medicines. And that’s why POLs, if at all they exist, cannot be given equal importance as KOLs and pharma marketers cannot afford to limit the role of Doctors.

Moreover, patients need a platform to voice their opinion to become “Patient as a Leader. The so-called Health 2.0 or Pharma 2.0 provides a convenient platform in terms of blogs and social networking websites. Internationally, there are websites like Patientslikeme.com (featured as Disruptor of the Month by Forbes, March issue) and Six Until Me (a popular diabetes blog started by Kerry Morrone) that provide the right platform to share patients’ views, to discuss treatment options, etc. In India, we don’t have such websites but soon we might see similar websites catering to health conscious netizens.

We should know that giving opinions on topics like movies, cars, consumer durables, etc. is fine, but when it comes to giving an informed opinion on health realted issue, one must be very careful. For example, when reports suggested that lithium might slow down the progression of ALS – a neurodegenerative disease, a number of ALS sufferers among the PatientsLikeMe community began their own somewhat impromptu drug trial, taking lithium and posting the results. Although the website has not run a formal trial and only facilitates members reporting of their results, there still has been some controversy. Such incidences can be disastrous. We must understand that leaders have followers. When it comes to treating disease, it’s advisable to follow a physician than a POL. In a nutshell, POLs, a non-medical professional who inspire trust and acts as guide to other patients, can create lots of controversies and that’s not good news for pharma marketer.

There is no denying that internet is going to play a very important role. In US, 59% of the patients turn to internet as their first source of health information. Same might be true for India. Pharma companies are already using internet to provide information to patients. Patients are connecting with each other on the net, but at the same time I believe as far as serious medical ailment is concerned, patients are aware that there is a difference between sharing experiences on the net and taking decision based on those opinions.

The Indian Pharma Marketer should also ask himself whether he would like to empower patients to an extent that the ‘empowered’ patients start questioning doctors or interfering with doctors’ prescriptions. The answer is a big NO, because no pharma company would like to take that risk of offending doctors. We know what happens when you turn a prescriptive brand into OTC brand and start directly promoting it to patients/consumers. That brand might increase overall sales but it surely looses out Doctors’ prescription.

On a lighter side, I have a different theory on the evolution of Patient Opinion Leaders concept. I believe the POL concept is promoted by pharma marketers who hate doctors, because no matter what innovative, out of the box, disrutptive marketing strategy they implement, but ultimately the fate of prescriptive brands are in doctor’s hand and in most cases, the KOLs decide the success or failure of the brand. Therefore frustated pharma marketers want to counter KOLs by creating another equally powerful monster called POLs. Don’t forget guys, a monster is a monster is a monster!