Redefining HCP Engagement with Clinical, Behavioral & Companion Diagnostics

Gosia Leitch
VP of Engagement Solutions
Engagement Solutions
From Credentials to Connection: How Combining Clinical, Behavioral & Companion Diagnostics Data Is Redefining HCP Engagement

Despite billions spent on HCP engagement, pharma is still struggling to connect. Traditional strategies focus on credentials and prescribing history. But they miss the full picture by not combining clinical, behavioral, and companion diagnostics data. The result? 97% of digital outreach goes unanswered. And while 82% of pharma executives believe their efforts are effective, only 28% of HCPs agree. The gap is widening, costing brands relevance, access, and impact.

 

Why Legacy Strategies Have Lost Their Edge

For decades, sales and marketing relied on NPI targeting built on:

  • Retrospective billing codes
  • Specialty segmentation
  • Market-basket prescribing history
  • In-person field visits
  • Qualitative research

In today's AI-driven, multimodal world, "credential-based" approaches lack precision and real-time patient context. To understand more about providers, what they treat for, and how they learn and connect, we need more than credentials. Companion diagnostics add another layer of insight, identifying patients for targeted therapies.

 

Clinical Intelligence: Understanding Who HCPs Treat

Real-world diagnostic and treatment data shows what conditions providers treat. It can also show how advanced they are, and which gene mutations may guide targeted therapy. Companion diagnostics can connect specific test to targeted treatment decisions. This shifts targeting beyond static claims to high value clinical insights, such as:

  • Lab data revealing ongoing testing and monitoring for disease progression and patient outcomes
  • Cohort specificity within conditions, i.e. uncontrolled, stage, test result levels
  • Biomarker positive populations (HER2+, EGFR+, PDL1+) and mutations
  • Companion diagnostics can help identify patients who may be eligible for targeted therapies

Why it matters - Clinical intelligence helps you reach providers who are actually treating your patients.

 
Behavioral Intelligence: Understanding Providers as People

Behavioral and attitudinal data reveal how HCPs prefer to engage:

  • Demographics: age, gender, ethnicity, bilingual ability
  • Channel preferences: CTV, podcasts, social, email, other
  • Mindset: early adopters, tech-forward, open to innovation
  • Influence: ability to shape adoption decisions within organizations

Why it matters - Reach providers in ways that fit how they learn and make decisions.

 
Clinical + Behavioral Intelligence: A New Era of Precision Engagement

On their own, clinical and behavioral insights add value. Together, they redefine targeting. Brands can now connect with the right provider, at the right moment, in the way they prefer. Companion diagnostics can add insight into testing and treatment for specific therapies.

This isn’t theory it’s live in market. By combining lab data and behavioral insights, AnalyticsIQ and Diaceutics have built more than 100 HCP audiences. This is now available for activation via Deepintent and Doceree.

Examples of AnalyticsIQ and Diaceutics blended audiences include:

  • Early adopter cardiologists treating patients with LDL > 100
  • Bilingual rheumatologists managing CCP/ESR-positive patients
  • Podcast-listening oncologists treating HER2+ breast cancer patients
 
Putting It Into Practice

Blended audiences deliver:

  • Reach with relevance: engage HCPs aligned to therapy opportunity and engagement style
  • Higher conversion: personalize outreach by channel, language, or adoption mindset
  • Omnichannel optimization: activate across CTV, podcast, social, and endemic platforms
  • Better outcomes: align testing with treatment, drive faster adoption, improve patient matching
  • Companion diagnostics can give providers the information they need to guide a patient’s treatment.
 
A Smarter Path Forward

The future of HCP engagement will depend on precision, and a combination of relevance and human understanding. AnalyticsIQ and Diaceutics help pharma marketers engage HCPs using real-world behavioral and diagnostic insights.

About Diaceutics

We’ve been with pharma and biotech companies for over 20 years, helping them to make more informed diagnostic and therapeutic decisions based on real-world data. Our platforms and tools provide global insight from a network of laboratories across 50+ countries.

This unparalleled visibility into real-world testing helps support therapy programs across oncology, cardiology, neurology, autoimmune, rare diseases, and many more.

Why is traditional HCP engagement no longer effective in pharma marketing?

Traditional HCP engagement relies on credential-based targeting, such as retrospective billing codes, specialty segmentation and prescribing history, which lacks real-time patient context. This gap in precision helps explain why 97% of digital outreach to HCPs goes unanswered, despite 82% of pharma executives believing their efforts are effective.

What is clinical intelligence in HCP engagement?

Clinical intelligence uses real-world diagnostic and treatment data to reveal which conditions a provider actually treats, how advanced their patients are, and which biomarkers or mutations may guide targeted therapy decisions. This shifts targeting from static claims data to high-value clinical insights like biomarker-positive populations and companion diagnostic results.

What is behavioral intelligence and how does it improve HCP targeting?

Behavioral intelligence captures how healthcare providers prefer to engage, including channel preferences (such as CTV, podcasts or social media), demographics, mindset, and their influence over adoption decisions within their organization. This helps brands reach providers in ways that match how they actually learn and make decisions.

How does combining clinical and behavioral data improve pharma marketing outcomes?

Combining clinical and behavioral data allows brands to connect with the right provider, at the right moment, through their preferred communication channel. Diaceutics and AnalyticsIQ have used this blended approach to build over 100 HCP audiences, now available for activation via Deepintent and Doceree.

What role do companion diagnostics play in HCP audience targeting?

Companion diagnostics help identify which patients are eligible for targeted therapies by connecting specific test results to treatment decisions. This adds a further layer of precision to HCP targeting, helping brands reach providers who are actively treating and testing relevant patient populations.

What are the benefits of blended clinical and behavioral HCP audiences?
Blended audiences improve reach and relevance by aligning outreach with both therapy opportunity and engagement style, enabling higher conversion through personalized, omnichannel activation across CTV, podcast, social and endemic platforms, ultimately driving faster treatment adoption and better patient matching.
Written By Gosia Leitch
Leading our Engagement Solutions, Gosia designs and delivers data-driven HCP engagement strategies that help pharma partners unlock the full potential of diagnostically driven therapies and accelerate biomarker and treatment adoption. Since joining Diaceutics in 2024, Gosia has been pivotal in scaling Engagement Solutions, sharpening our commercial proposition and driving deeper utilisation of genomics and oncology diagnostics across global pharma accounts. With 20+ years in diagnostics and pharma, including senior roles at Veracyte, Abbott and Bayer, Gosia brings expertise in commercial strategy, brand management and HCP education. She holds an MBA from the University of Iowa and executive education in Corporate Strategy from Columbia Business School.
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