The growth of medical market in Russia is just starting and the potential of this market is enormous. The medical services market in the world is of an astonishing scale. Upon estimates of Deloitte it will grow from 7.72 trillion dollars in 2017 to 10.06 trillion in 2022. Currently it is one of the mostly attractive markets as regards investment. Simultaneously, as any market that starts exuberant growth, it will present new challenges in the nearest perspective, particularly growth of requirements to professionalism. It happened to other industries in our country, now far ahead of medical: banking and insurance, telecoms, retail and so forth.
In the medical market marketing per se is now found with a few leading companies. Other companies do not as yet display marketing as an independent competence.
The major outstanding feature of medical marketing is in specific, unique relationship with the customer. It is hardly worth mentioning that error has a higher price than anywhere else. The party, rendering medical services (medical establishment and doctors) is obliged to take into account low level of awareness on the part of service consumers (patients and their relatives). Customer is practically unable to assess the quality of service, in some cases even draw a border between medical and non-medical services. In no other industry the object of marketing efforts is that specific (perhaps only in marketing for children). Turning to a clinic to resolve their problem patients experience fear about their life and health – their own and of their relatives. Patients are prepared to accept discomfort and pain as part of the service. They cannot judge the service quality objectively but have to trust experts and form an opinion solely on the service component. For the patient true professional quality of the medical service and service in itself often possess different weight, frequently service in itself pulls heavier on the scales. Level of trust to the clinic and the doctor may facilitate or complicate the treatment process. There is talk lately of the so called iatrogenic illness – caused by actions or even words coming from the doctors.
This means not only specific requirements to responsibility, ethics, knowledge of medical marketing specialists. And not even the fact that a whole range of marketing tools and techniques, typical for traditional marketing, are either impossible or useless for the medical one. This means there is a demand to formulate if not a professional standard itself, but principles following which would be a professionalism criterion.
Below are the principles we developed in INVITRO and which we follow. Accordingly, we offer them to the market as leaders.
- Boundaries of medical marketing. To us medical marketing is marketing of services built on evidence based medicine principles. Subject to staying within these boundaries, information services and profile media may be considered a part of medical marketing. We do not (with some exceptions) refer pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and gadgets trade and apothecary retail to medical marketing. Promotion of non-medical and traditional medicine services does not constitute a part of medical marketing, as these are not built on evidence based medicine principles.
- Special education. It is possible for experts lacking profile medical education to perform effectively in medical marketing. However, the team needs experienced medics’ expertise for marketing activities.
- Professional ethics. Medical marketer must know and share ethical and deontological norms of medical community, alongside professional ethics of marketing community. It is he, not the medical expert, who is held responsible for the final content of transmitted communicational messages.
- Patient awareness. In communications both with patients and the medical community it is necessary to establish a clear line between medicine and adjacent sectors: paramedical services, traditional medicine and so forth.
- Marketing and treatment process. Medical marketing cannot be a part of actual rendering of a service. In other words, in the process of diagnostics and treatment a doctor cannot be a marketer at the same time, be involved with cross-sale or up-sale of other goods or services to the patient, collecting marketing information etc., as it may come in contradiction with optimal treatment tactics.
- Health care system. Medical marketing as an integral part of health care system should not divide the medical community into commercial and non-commercial. One of the principles of medical marketing is equal respect to a medic carrying his/her duties irrespective of where it happens or in what position.
- Impartiality. Medical marketing should be independent from any personal opinion of a medical service supplier, manufacturer of pharmaceuticals or medical equipment. Performing its tasks in health care medical marketing must remain impartial and unbiased, standing upon the judgements of medical community.
- Communications ethics. Medical marketing makes medicine a part of everyday life of a contemporary person, and is entitled to employ humor, hype, vibrant images if it does not impair the feelings of patients, persons with deviations, inborn or chronic diseases and so forth. It is inadmissible to frighten patients in communications, forcing them to make unreasonable decisions, and to juxtapose healthy and ill persons.
- Service and servicing. Medical marketing should help the patient to draw a correct line between the professional and servicing parts of a medical service, objectively changing the attitude towards its true quality (or its true value). Thanks to medical marketing a patient should comprehend that good service cannot replace professional diagnostics and treatment.
- Treatment process. Medical marketing should strive to have a patient fully informed of diagnostics and treatment process peculiarities, of possible risks and complications, forming a realistic picture and realistic expectations. At the same time medical marketing should not influence treatment process and doctor tactics.