Cases

A new model for medical education

How can a leading pharmaceutical company increase access for its medical education?

The Stem was hired by the Internal Medicine Franchise of a Top 5 Pharmaceutical company
to conduct an assessment of the Medical Education landscape and to develop a distinct set of
recommendations to enable its brands to lead in this rapidly evolving environment.

Drawing on a mix of in-depth interviews, online focus groups, online survey research,
stakeholder workshops and a thorough literature review, The Stem analyzed the performance
of our client’s med-ed activities, the macro-trends shaping medical education, physician
learning preferences, and disruptive innovation opportunities. The research gave our client
an intimate understanding of the convergent forces shaping medical education, including the
Accountable Care Act, ACO’s the Sunshine Act, Conflict of Interest policies, access restrictions,
Institutional CME policies, growth in digital learning and opportunities presented by digital
media, electronic medical records, and audience engagement technologies.

Our recommendations detailed concrete actions and a road map for our client to evolve its
practice in the areas of multi-channel learner recruitment, education programming formats,
relationship marketing, and outcomes-based learning curricula and cross-channel effectiveness
measurement.

Beyond strategy, The Stem played a pivotal ongoing role in operational implementation
resulting in tangible improvements in metrics in several areas including target recruitment
yield, customer engagement and satisfaction rates.