Why Must Any Strong Medical Device Marketing Plan Use Key Opinion Leaders

Why Must Any Strong Medical Device Marketing Plan Use Key Opinion Leaders?

medical-device-marketing | Photo Courtesy of Depositphotos http://depositphotos.com/1103218/stock-photo-Woman-doctor.html?sqc=41&sqm=29760&sq=wfwrk

The 2013 Deloitte annual survey of U.S. physicians reveals that they still believe doctors have the most influence in choosing equipment for patients and procedures. This news, highlighted in an article on the Becker?s ASC Review website, could have a big influence on the approach to medical device marketing moving forward.

The survey showed that about 70 percent of U.S. physicians believe that physician-led peer review of new medical technology is the top best practice when making purchasing decisions. It is incumbent upon medical device manufacturers to understand that physicians still rely on other physicians and peer reviews of medical device technologies. To put that knowledge into practice with a sound medical device marketing plan, it is critical for manufacturers to use key opinion leaders (KOLs) to help influence others.

Read more here >>>

Article originally posted on our CRM for Medical Device Organizations website.

September 2, 2013

How Are Smartphones Driving Today?s Medical Device Innovation

How Are Smartphones Driving Today?s Medical Device Innovation?

medical-device-techonology-advances | Photo Courtesy of Depositphotos http://depositphotos.com/22411767/stock-photo-Doctor-ENT-checking-ear-with-otoscope-to-woman-patient.html?sqc=11&sqm=294&sq=13damf

An article on the InformationWeek Healthcare website drives home just how incredible recent advances in mobile technology have been. In the article, the author shares highlights of physician and author Eric Topol recent appearance on ?The Colbert Report,? during which comedian Stephen Colbert received a fascinating lesson in how smartphones have begun to drive medical device innovation.

Topol used his smartphone?s otoscope application to show the studio audience a vivid image of Colbert?s ear canal. The otoscope app is not yet on the market, but it?s coming, along with many more health care utilities that will literally put the power of diagnosis and even treatment in the hands of patients.

There are some amazing real-world uses of mobile technologies focused on health care. A smartphone actually can be multiple devices, in that it also can monitor heart rates, blood sugar, oxygen levels and many other vital statistics. This can be extended even further to include the ability to capture that information for each patient the physician is treating. That means no more transcribing results and huge efficiency gains.

Read more here >>>

Article originally posted on our CRM for Medical Device Organizations website.

August 28, 2013

Better Training The Key To Success In New Medical Device Sales Model

Why Is Better Training The Key To Success In New Medical Device Sales Model?

medical-device-sales-models | Photo Courtesy of PresseBox.de flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/pressebox/6979287289/sizes/q/

Rapid technological advances and an ever-shifting marketplace require a nimble and forward-thinking approach to medical device sales. Companies frequently are adopting new technologies in response to how selling in the industry is changing.

The most critical component of any implementation is the training that goes along with it. Product- or feature-based training no longer is enough. The key is to train everybody how to use the tool in relation to how they do their work. That means an end user would be trained differently than a manager.

An article on the Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry website lists three steps that can help ensure that the company?s first-line management (FLM) team is equipped for the work required and given every opportunity to thrive.

Define roles clearly from the top down, leaving no question about hierarchy and decision-making responsibility.
Select people whose skill sets fall into line with those required of managers, which does not necessarily mean promoting the best sales people into management positions.
Providing sufficient resources and ongoing skills development. This is particularly important for managers who lack experience or are relatively unfamiliar with the corporate culture.

One way to ensure that managers are sufficiently supported is to put the right customer relationship management (CRM) system in place. Managing by spreadsheets, phone calls and emails is considerably different with the right CRM system.

On the other hand, the shiny new system will only be effective if users are trained how to use it in the context of the way they work. Otherwise, they?ll simply fall back into their old habits and the company won?t gain the full value of the system.

One of the major oversights in training that we see is for managers ? specifically, how to manage with these new tools and technologies. One of the greatest risks of failure is to roll out a new system but not teach the managers how to manage using the tools. After all, if an end user?s manager is not using the tool and encouraging use, then people tend to fall back on what they know. This all too often leads to a failed implementation of the CRM tool.

By following the steps above and integrating the sales force with a reliable, comprehensive CRM system, medical product manufacturers can take advantage of an under-leveraged opportunity in the industry ? a well-trained, fully attuned FLM team nimble enough to adjust to the ever-shifting medical device industry.

Source: Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry Online, March 2013

August 21, 2013

Preparing For Sunshine Act Rules

How Should Medical Device Technology Companies Prepare For Sunshine Act Rules?

medical-device-sunshine-act | Photo Courtesy of geomphotography http://www.flickr.com/photos/geomphotography/6779619531/sizes/q/in/photostream/

How much is the Physician Payment Sunshine Act going to add to the cost of meeting reporting requirements? Probably a lot more than most medical device technology companies realize, according to a recent article on the Mass Device website.

Jonathan Kellerman, compliance and risk assessment manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, believes the ?make-it-or-break-it? variable that will determine how well each company handles the costs is its data management system. More mature, consistent and high-quality systems will have an easier time reporting to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

It might be easier for smaller companies to comply with the new regulations simply because they have less data to report, but the bottom line is that the edge will go to those that embrace technology and use a CRM system to streamline the process

The new reporting requirements were released in February. As the article explains, ?the measure requires companies to track all interactions with physicians and start reporting the data to CMS by March 31, 2014.?

Specifically, any medical device technology company that interacts directly with a physician will be required to report expenses over $10 spent on that physician. That includes royalties, consulting fees and research fees. This mean there is even more information that companies now must collect. For example, if you buy a physician breakfast that costs more than $10, you?ll have to record that physician?s name, where you spent the money, when the meeting occurred and the reason for that interaction.

Many companies don?t have technology in place to record this type of information. While this can be done manually, using a CRM system is much more efficient. A CRM system can track physician information and record where and when expenses were incurred each day.

Read more here >>>

Article originally posted on our CRM for Medical Device Organizations website.

August 21, 2013

Dynamics CRM No Code Multi-Select Picklist

How to Create a Dynamics CRM No Code Multi-Select Picklist

What is a multi-select picklist you may ask? Here is an example. Let’s say that you need to track multiple specialties for the physicians in your CRM database. E.g. Cardiovascular Disease, Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology. Another example might be, what your contacts interests are; Baseball, Basketball, Curling, Football, Golf, Soccer, Swimming, etc.

In most cases, I see this implemented with some code that looks something like this…

Nothing wrong with this approach, it just requires some code and someone to manage and update that code when changes are needed.

I’m a big fan of no code configuration or customization where possible. The benefits with this approach are:

There is no code to maintain
Does not require a developer to manage and update; business users can easily make changes as needed
?Upgrades smoothly

I am also a big fan of NOT re-inventing the wheel. So below, I provide a couple of great resources that inspired this post. First is the link that gives you some more background and screenshots on creating Dynamics CRM no code multi-select picklist.

http://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/richardknudson/archive/2011/05/08/many-to-many-relationships-in-dynamics-crm-2011.aspx

The next is a video from one of the great Dyamics CRM MVP’s that are out there, Richard Kudson, take it away Richard…

August 12, 2013

Microsoft Details Office 365 Upgrade Options

Office 365 customers can more easily switch plans with new Office 365 Upgrade Options

“We’ve been listening to your feedback and today we are announcing the ability for customers to more easily switch between Office 365 business plans.”

Well, really more like HALF listening.

Microsoft is finally updating its promised Office 365 switching capability, allowing users to upgrade to new plans more easily and quickly; which is a good thing. Customers SHOULD be able to decide what products and services they want to buy from a company. The problem is, and this is the half listening part, customers cannot back track to a less costly plan.

Customers are also saying, rightfully so, they want and should be able to easily downgrade to different plans, should their needs change.

But hey, it’s a step in the right direction. Caveat, only those with plans covering 300 users or fewer can use the automatic switching wizard at this time.

Before Microsoft introduced this swtiching capability, customers had to manually re-assign user licenses and call Office 365 support to cancel their old subscriptions. The new Switch plans wizard allows some plan changes to be done automatically and without calling support.

The chart below provides more details on the Office 365 upgrade options and switchable plans.

Available now	?
From	To
Small Business P1	Small Business Premium P2
Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 2), SharePoint Online? (Plan 1)	Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4
Enterprise E1, SharePoint Online? (Plan 2), Exchange Online (Plan 2)	Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4
Education A1	Education A2, A3
Education A2	Education A3
Exchange Online Kiosk	Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4, Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Exchange Online (Plan 2)

To get more details and read the FAQ, follow this link:

http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/01/office-365-customers-can-more-easily-switch-plans.aspx

August 7, 2013

4 Keys For Medical Device Technology Firms To Succeed Amid Changes

medical-device-technology-success | Photo Courtesy of Kiva.Dang http://www.flickr.com/photos/arena_provietnam/3182525146/sizes/q/

Few people in the health care industry would dispute the idea that big changes are ahead. Many fundamental changes already are here.

For starters, health care reform is challenging manufacturers to prove that their devices significantly improve clinical outcomes and reduce a patient?s total cost of health care, and pricing constraints will continue to be a challenge for medical device manufacturers as health care reimbursements decline.

In fact, it?s estimated that the squeeze from new regulations will force health care providers to cut overhead by 20 to 40 percent. Innovative medical device technology companies can play a role in securing a fundamentally different future for the nation?s health care industry by proactively addressing these cost concerns.

Read more here >>>

Article originally posted on our CRM for Medical Device Organizations website.

August 6, 2013

Dynamics CRM 2013 Blitz Day Technical Track Notes

CRM 2013 Blitz Day Technical Track Notes

Microsoft held the Dynamics CRM 2013 Training Blitz Day for partners on July 31. The sessions were split into two tracks, sales & marketing track and technical track. The notes below are for the ?Technical Overview for Application Consultants, Presales Consultants and Developers?.

The primary themes for Dynamics 2013 are:

Re-imagined User Experience (Flow UI)
Process Agility
Yammer Integration
Outlook Client Improvements
New Exchange Sync
Upgrade Process
Business Rules
Client Extensibility
Extensibility on the Server and Cloud
CRM as a Platform for Business Apps

The new UI that is available in the Polaris release will be complete for all entities. This release will include additional changes with the release of a new “ribbon” toolbar?(will be called the Command Bar) at the top. I like the new UI and it seems that it will be easier to navigate with very few popups. We will see a more streamlined UI with more white space which makes the app look a lot cleaner and more modern.

?Another new paradigm is the heavy process oriented flow of the UI. We do see this a bit in the Polaris Flow UI forms, where essentially the flow of a process is spread across the top 1/3 of the screen that represents stages, with steps associated within each stage. This will be across all of the main entities, including leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities and cases. From what I heard, new entities will have the same features, although not 100% confirmed yet. This could be a great differentiator, as these essentially “process flows” guide a user through an entire process. And yes, multiple processes and process switching will be supported.

Business rules and synchronous workflows are new features of Dynamics CRM 2013 and will expand the no-code capabilities of the product. Microsoft calls it “declarative” configuration; which is essentially more like the current Processes vs. the Form editor drag and drop (more descriptive, less visual). This is a new feature and DIFFERENT than Processes (Workflows & Dialogs) and different than plugins (which require code). Business Rules will support “no code required” rules; such as, if then else, change a field based on another field, comparisons, formula’s, etc. E.g. the ability to create a rule that says If field A = Red, then Set Field B = “123”. Or, If field C = “Blue” then show Tab 2. All in all a nice edition because JavaScript is required to do this today.

The mobile updates include a responsive design and ?write once? business logic. Responsive means the UI has the ability to detect the “size” of the screen and adjusts the layout automatically. The initial release will see support for Windows Phone and iPhone, with Android to follow shortly. On the tablet front, iPad and Windows 8 tablets, with no information on Android tablets, other than it’s on the roadmap.

There will be NO offline use for mobile devices in the initial release. One exception, there will be “offline” capability for Windows 8 tablets, but it’s a caching approach, so, don’t get sucked in by the marketing speak. This is not offline and merely has a few of the most recently browsed records offline. So, this means that Resco and CWR will still be the go to applications for full device offline capabilities. I suspect both will also be far more feature complete with device online capabilities as well, for the time being.

There IS still offline capability with the full Outlook client for Windows 8 tablets (Surface Pro, Convertibles, laptops, etc.). Good news on true offline, the Outlook client has been re-designed with a focus on performance and stability improvements. Technically they have created more “isolation” of running processes which is a fancy way of saying the code has been optimized. No numbers were shared but should definitely see better performance and less hit on client memory.

Editable grids is always a hot topic and we finally START to see these in CRM 2013. Initially the editable grid is on the Opportunity entity only, for easier product entry. It looks pretty good and provides in cell editing and configurable columns. Unfortunately this is the only place it will be available for now. The plan is to add it to other areas. I did not get an answer if this was a new “control” that could be re-used in other areas, I suspect not at this time.

Speaking of new controls, there will also be a new image control for adding images to entities. The one bummer about it, only 1 image control per form.

Server-to-server side sync for activities/calendar and email is long overdue and looks to be a good replacement for the email router; however email router is not going away at this time. Tracking selected individual items will still require Outlook, though. The first release will be an all or nothing approach, meaning, no rules can be configured for selective tracking of email or activities using server side sync. It will provide a way for mobile clients to finally have Calendar and email sync, which is a great step forward.

We have heard some information on the Yammer, MarketingPilot and NetBreeze acquisitions and they will play a significant role in the future of the product, but CRM 2013 will have limited integration with these products. Yammer will have the tightest integration and can essentially replace Activity Feeds (but AF is not going away just yet). The main thing to know about Yammer, it will NOT be free. In order to use the CRM-Yammer integration one will be required to purchase the Yammer Enterprise application, or, have an existing Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.? Rumors are that E1-E4 Office 365 will include Yammer integration with that platform, could not get an answer if that will include CRM if it is part of your Office 365 E-x subscription.

There will essentially be no MarketingPilot or Netbreeze integration with this initial release. There is a CRM connector for CRM-MarketingPilot today, it’s free, but currently limited to select Clients and Partners. We won’t see any real integration until the “Mira” release, sometime in 2014.

There were LOTS of questions on upgrading, what’s going to work, what will break, etc. A beta of the release is now available for downloading so we should be able to get an idea of what will happen with existing customization’s and configurations. Microsoft has claimed that MOST configuration and supported customization’s SHOULD work without issue. We shall see.

If you have been following my tweets, Yammer or i3 Community blog posts I provided an update that Microsoft is starting to announce release “dates”. No official date but indicators are late October will be the official launch of Dynamics CRM 2013

http://www.i3.infinityinfo.com/blogs/entry/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2013-official

August 5, 2013

Voice Recognition Innovations Can Revolutionize Medical Device Technology

How Might Voice Recognition Innovations Revolutionize Medical Device Technology?

voice-recognition-medical-device-technology | Photo Courtesy of plantronicsgermany http://www.flickr.com/photos/plantronicsgermany/8138951059/sizes/q/

Ray Kurzweil showed us voice recognition in computers was possible. Siri showed us how voice recognition could be cool. Star Trek showed how awesome it will be.

Could voice recognition innovations revolutionize medical device technology? Believe it.

A blog post on The Huffington Post website highlights the possibilities of voice-guided (or voice-enabled) technologies, specifically mentioning Auvi-Q, an epinephrine auto-injector that talks users through the injection process during a severe allergic reaction.

Read more here >>>

Article originally posted on our CRM for Medical Device Organizations website.

Mike Hammons

Posts