Pharma Faces an Execution Gap Between Diagnosis and Treatment. How Can Marketers Close It?

This article is part of solli’s October series exploring  HCP and Patient Engagement. 

For pharma brands, a patient starting an appropriate therapy is the final step on a long pathway paved by actions and decisions by the patient, their care teams and the brand itself. Ushering a patient from a diagnosis to treatment is by no means a simple or straightforward process, and all too often, that journey never reaches the desired final destination. 

A recent report from Diaceutics suggests that closing that gap—between a patient’s being diagnosed and starting a specific therapy—represents the next major commercialization challenge for pharmas, overtaking a previous focus on merely identifying eligible patients. 

The report is based on a survey of 125 senior pharma leaders in the U.S. When asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how much future commercialization success will depend on diagnosis-to-treatment conversion, the respondents gave an average answer of 7.5, with close to 60% strongly agreeing (at least an 8 out of 10 rating) that diagnosis-to-treatment conversion is as important as brand promotion in determining future success. 

In terms of their current effectiveness in turning diagnostic insight into coordinated action, however, the pharma leaders gave an average rating of just 5.2, and fewer than 9% scored their organization’s ability to make that conversion at an 8 or higher. 

That disconnect persists despite major investments across pharma media in data, analytics and omnichannel marketing, showcasing how, as Diaceutics CEO Ryan Keeling told solli, “Pharma doesn’t have a data shortage, it has an execution problem.” 

“The industry has become incredibly sophisticated at collecting and analyzing data, but intelligence is only valuable if you can act on it,” he explained. “Too much of that intelligence remains fragmented across commercial, medical, diagnostics and marketing teams, while traditional commercialization models are still built around retrospective data, established HCP targets and predetermined campaigns. That simply isn’t responsive enough for the increasing amount of diagnostic-driven therapies, where the opportunity to identify and support an eligible patient is often time-sensitive.” 

The challenge, then, lies in “moving from understanding what happened to knowing what’s happening now, and acting while there’s still an opportunity to make a difference,” Keeling said.  

The most successful organizations moving forward will therefore be those that are able to turn data into timely, coordinated action, and pharma marketers have a major role to play in that transformation. 

Mind the gap 

The Diaceutics survey digs into many of the underlying factors for what it terms the “strategy-to-execution gap.” 

Overall, the surveyed pharma leaders gave themselves an average score of 6.6 out of 10 in their confidence in identifying eligible patients. The challenge of those identified patients not going on to start an appropriate therapy, however, earned a 7.3, with almost 50% labeling it a significant challenge (at least an 8 out of 10). 

When asked about the obstacles that keep patients from making the leap from diagnosis to appropriate therapy, the most common answers from the respondents included access/reimbursement, late testing, failure to identify patients and test results not leading to treatment, in that order. 

That multitude of issues points to the need for precision “across the entire patient pathway, not just at the point of prescribing,” according to Keeling. 

“There’s no single bottleneck, which means there can’t be a single solution,” he said. “Marketers need to understand where patients are being missed throughout the journey, which stakeholders influence those stages and where they can help improve the pathway.” 

But achieving that understanding may represent another challenge in itself. The survey respondents rated their visibility across the entire patient journey, spanning initial testing, diagnosis, treatment decision and therapy start, at an average of just 5.4 out of 10. Only 12% scored themselves at an 8 or higher. 

What it means for marketers 

So, how can pharma media contribute to closing the execution gap and boosting diagnosis-to-treatment conversion? 

For one, according to Keeling, media strategy will need to shift away from the traditional practice of defining broad audiences based on retrospective data like historical prescribing activity—sources that don’t always provide the most relevant, up-to-date information about the clinicians actually treating specific patients, especially when it comes to influencing decision-making around diagnostic-driven therapies. 

“Marketers need to move toward more clinically informed, timely targeting, combining diagnostic and real-world insights to understand where opportunities exist and which stakeholders matter,” he said. 

Essentially, as Keeling put it, “The question used to be: How many HCPs can we reach? The better question is: Are we reaching the right HCPs, with the right information, at the point when it actually matters?” 

That may require taking a more expansive view of the HCP landscape, extending marketing efforts beyond just prescribers to also include wider care teams, as well as pathologists, lab professionals and specialists, all of whom have a hand in patient identification, testing and referrals. It may also necessitate more targeted engagement and education to accommodate variations in testing practices across healthcare organizations and geographic regions. 

“The opportunity isn’t necessarily to spend more on media, but to spend more intelligently, directing investment toward the audiences, information needs and moments that can make the greatest difference,” Keeling said. 

This strategy shift will naturally also require a shift in how pharma media measures success. 

“If your campaign delivers millions of impressions but you still don’t understand why eligible patients aren’t reaching treatment, you’re measuring activity, not impact. Reach, engagement and brand awareness remain important, but they don’t tell the whole story,” Keeling said. “Marketers need to better understand how their activities contribute to progress across the patient pathway, from appropriate testing and referral through to treatment initiation. This means moving beyond campaign-level KPIs to establish a clearer connection between commercial investment, patient pathway performance and meaningful results.” 

The Diaceutics CEO also suggested that the same shift will need to occur across all agency, media and technology team-ups. 

“Pharma should expect partners to bring more than campaign execution or sophisticated targeting capabilities,” he said. “They need to understand the clinical and diagnostic context, connect different sources of intelligence and help translate insights into coordinated engagement.” 

At the core, key to managing all this transformation, as he noted throughout the interview, will be collaboration: “We need to move beyond individual brands and organizations working in isolation, toward greater collaboration on shared problems, with measurable progress and solutions that can be scaled.” 

For more on HCP and Patient Engagement,  click here.

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