Physician Engagement Vital in Improving Patient Outcomes & Medical Research: Harshit Jain, Doceree

Physician engagement is at the heart of healthcare, where collaboration, communication, and innovation take place to deliver better patient outcomes and advance medical research. In an era driven by data and digital transformation, the engagement of healthcare professionals plays a pivotal role in reshaping the industry.

Doceree, a physician engagement startup founded in 2019 by Harshit Jain, is making significant strides in improving healthcare communication.

In an exclusive interview with Dr Jayati Dubey, Industry Analyst, DHN, Harshit Jain discusses the importance of physician engagement in improving patient outcomes, Doceree’s solutions, and its recent $35 million Series-B funding round led by Creaegis.

Q. How does Doceree's platform facilitate effective communication and engagement between healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical companies?

Harshit Jain: Doceree's prime objective is to build an 'all in one' platform that seamlessly streamlines all communication needs among the key decision-makers within the global healthcare industry. In the last decade, the industry has witnessed how innovative business models have significantly disrupted sectors by reducing marketing costs. However, the adoption of such innovations by pharmaceuticals is still awaited, citing the hassles of regulations. This is where Doceree is making the difference.

The platform's integrated and collaborative ecosystem enables pharmaceutical brands and digital platforms to leverage uncharted opportunities within the life sciences marketing landscape in the most organised manner possible. With our solution, Rx drug marketers can promote their drugs in a customised format to the targeted healthcare professionals while providing an opportunity for digital platforms to generate decent revenue. This indeed encourages digital platforms to not digress from their business and focus on the challenges that are yet to be addressed within the healthcare ecosystem.

Q. What specific challenges in physician engagement does Doceree aim to address in the Indian healthcare industry?

Harshit Jain: Digitisation seems to have triggered a wave, which is steering forward to envelop almost every existing space, be it industrial or virtual. This indeed proves that data holds paramount value for any development to take place. Having said that, India has emerged as one of the fastest-developing digital economies in the last few years, characterised by a 90% progress in the digital adoption index from 2014 to 2017. In terms of revenue, the digital healthcare market in India was valued at INR 116.61 Bn in 2018 and is estimated to reach INR 485.43 Bn by 2024.

Though I'm enthralled with how the development and organisation of data is manifesting in India, we currently lack the ability to 'artfully leverage' healthcare data that's present in abundance.

To ensure transparent and efficient communication, an increased number of 'data markets' is the need of the hour. These data markets shall effectively bridge the communications gap between doctors and pharmaceuticals to generate key information pertaining to a patient's medical history, thereby increasing the frequency of clinical trials and medical research for enhanced health outcomes. Moreover, factors including inferior technology infrastructure and unstructured regulations pose challenges to the digital healthcare market.

Q. Can you explain the importance of physician engagement in improving patient outcomes and advancing medical research?

Harshit Jain: From a holistic perspective, physician engagement has been initially rooted in quality and safety improvement strategies.

As the physician marketing landscape evolves with pharmaceuticals embracing digital mediums, a greater understanding of physician behaviours and communication preferences will be identified and integrated into marketing plans. This will provide valuable insights for pharma marketers to identify the moments during the physician's journey to deliver messages that will resonate with the physician's decisions and eventually augment positive business outcomes.

Further, marketers that utilise data on a physician's prescribing behaviour and communication preferences have an opportunity to identify the key moments to share messages with physicians on these virtual mediums. With data-driven strategies, programmatic platforms now play a prominent role in gaining valuable marketing insights. Moreover, the right set of messages delivered to target HCPs at opportune moments can magnificently amplify business outcomes and ensure that a brand's marketing cost is leveraged thoroughly by limiting the spillover effect.

Q. What are the key solutions offered by Doceree to enhance physician engagement, and how do they benefit healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical companies?

Harshit Jain: Keeping in mind the challenges of the healthcare media buying ecosystem, Doceree has invented two independent platforms for the supply and demand side requirements of a brand-- Doceree for Providers and Doceree Enterprise, respectively.

Doceree for Providers is an application built exclusively for healthcare professionals (HCPs) that works inside their electronic health record (EHR) workflows. It enables pharmaceutical and life science brands to communicate highly targeted information about the latest drug therapies, patient affordability programs and clinical trial eligibility through point-of-care platforms to physicians when they tend to their patients.

On the other hand, Doceree Enterprise, an industry-first HCP-focussed global Demand Side Platform (DSP), delivers an integrated ecosystem to media agencies with built-for-scale programmatic capabilities to serve healthcare and life sciences brands. The platform is a fully self-serve ecosystem, enabling agencies to run highly targeted global and integrated campaigns with measurable outcomes. It also provides 'preferred access' to Doceree's specialised supply-side platform (SSP) – the world's largest integrated global network of 650+ endemic and point-of-care platforms, with a worldwide unique physician reach of over 2 million.

Q. Could you share insights into the recent Series-B funding round led by Creaegis and how the funds will further enhance Doceree's offerings and expansion plans?

Harshit Jain: With prominent leaders bestowing trust upon our AI-driven solutions that simplify physicians' engagement challenges, our focus is now towards driving the adoption of the programmatic technology in markets that are still in the nascent stages of getting familiar with the innovation.

As 'innovation for good' runs in Doceree's DNA, the additional $35 million capital raised in the latest Series B funding round shall be utilised to accelerate product development, augment technologies, scale global partnerships, expand team and most importantly, establish new products that bring efficacy in physician engagement tactics.

Doceree has grown over 100% in the last year, with monthly revenue exceeding fivefold between the Series A funding in April 2022 until now. Since then, the company has launched category-first innovations on the demand and supply sides, including Doceree Enterprise, an HCP-focussed global Demand Side Platform (DSP), and Doceree Provider, which empowers HCPs to improve the health outcomes of their patients.