Caregivers heavily influenced by drug information found online

Caregivers heavily influenced by drug information found online

The members of the caregiver segment--those who routinely care for someone else--are twice as likely to ask physicians for a specific drug as noncaregivers and are influenced by information they find online and through word of mouth, reports Datamonitor. "Caregivers are a more practical group, looking for health information online for themselves and for other people," says Markella Kordoyanni, Datamonitor analyst and author of Maximizing eHealth Tools for Caregivers: Cultivating Long-Term Relationships. Although often pressed for time, caregivers still spend as much time online looking for health information as other noncaregivers do. Kordoyanni says this suggests that caregivers navigate very quickly through sites, and she recommends that pharma design its drug and disease sites--especially those for chronic illnesses--with this in mind. "A site designed for caregivers should be personable and contain elements that will entice the viewer to stay on longer or return frequently," she says. Kordoyanni tells ePharm5 that this report would be helpful to a marketer in Big Pharma whose pipeline consists of treatments for chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and other geriatric diseases. The report chronicles what caregivers prefer when it comes to disease management tools and clinical trial and product Web sites.