By Daniel Ghinn 
This week I took part in a call with a group of international client colleagues, in which members of my team presented a report of our latest research study findings on the views of healthcare professionals.
The call was led by Suzanna Gamwell who, in her role as Client Advocate, is primarily focused on making sure our clients gain everything possible from working with us. As Suzanna presented our initial report to the client’s team and facilitated the discussion, I was reminded that her knowledge of the study material followed weeks of working closely with our team of Research Analysts to fine-tune the insights being distilled from healthcare professionals’ conversations.
Suzanna’s understanding of the client’s needs developed from her early work on the project, when she led the study setup process – a facilitated discussion with the client team to explore what they would really like to ask from our data on healthcare professionals’ online conversations.
This particular study focused on the needs of healthcare professionals in Germany, relating to vaccination for a niche disease area. Having scoped the specific business needs and goals behind the study, our research team collected data from conversations among healthcare professionals in Germany, which took place on public social media over the past two years.
To collect and analyse data, the team used CREATION Pinpoint, our proprietary technology platform which indexes almost half a million healthcare professional social media profiles worldwide and more than half a billion HCP-authored Tweets and posts. The development of CREATION Pinpoint has been led since 2012 by Eugen, our Chief Technology Visionary – himself a German national. Eugen is currently working on a new app for profiling healthcare professionals’ networks of online influence, and during the German vaccines study he was able to provide additional technical support to the project team in order to ensure no data opportunity was missed.
Meanwhile, our international team of Data Quality Analysts have been using CREATION Pinpoint’s intelligent machine learning system to support their desk research as they verify and classify data on healthcare professionals’ social media profiles, to continually grow our international datasets. When analysing HCP profiles in Germany, some Data Quality Analysts such as Jacquelin, also a German national, work in their first language.
We have previously seen that in the German market, healthcare professionals behave a little differently to their peers in other European markets. Whereas in Spain, for example, doctors frequently exchange ideas in extended conversations via Twitter, German doctors are a little more discreet, often preferring the kind of detailed clinical exchange facilitated by longer forms of social media such as blogs and forums. Datasets in our German studies are therefore often less quantitative than in other markets, but provide opportunity for detailed qualitative analysis.
Our research team relishes the challenges posed by this kind of study, into a vaccine for a niche disease area in Germany. For this project, a further six team members played an active, hands-on role in the research, each bringing unique strengths and experience. Four Research Analysts collaborated to analyse our data: Adam, whose experience prior to joining CREATION included programming brain mapping software while studying neuroscience; Henri, who has extensive previous experience as a Senior Data Quality Analyst; Jamie, whose strengths include visual storytelling with data; and Junell, who brings a structured thinking approach from previous experience in law and education. The Research Analysts on the study were supported by Paul, our Senior Healthcare Engagement Strategist who has developed many of our most innovative research methodologies, and Ina, who is Associate Consultant, Healthcare Research. Ina formerly worked as a healthcare professional in her home nation of Germany.
Others from among CREATION’s team of 30+ people will continue to support the study as we help our client to implement our findings. Luke, our Design Thinker, will bring his usability expertise to the final graphic design of the study report so that when Suzanna and I lead our ‘Insights & Actions’ workshop with the client team in Germany, everything we have discovered about the needs of their healthcare professional customers is clear and easily understood.
We have an amazing team at CREATION and I count it a huge blessing to lead them. I’m inspired by their passion and the vision to transform nations that underpins our work together.
If you would like to learn how our team could help you to discover insights from healthcare professionals online, why not contact Katie, our Head of Global Marketing, at [email protected].
