A new report from Doximity was released last week that looks at telemedicine use in 2024. It is based on surveys of 1,171 US physicians, 131 nurse practitioners, and 2,400 patients (1,200 with one or more chronic conditions).

Physicians seem to be losing a bit of their telemedicine time. Last year we reported on a Doximity report that put the weekly+ number at 84%. This year the weekly+ HCP number is 77% but the NP number is 89%.

This is unfortunate for physicians since care quality and convenience with telemedicine increases. Even with the decrease, work from home is available to some HCPs.

HCPs and patients diverge a bit on this question, but when asked if care quality is better, the same, or worse almost none say the latter.

Care is not only better but more convenient as well. Patients both with and without a chronic condition said it is faster and easier.

HCPs, however, do overestimate how satisfied patients are with telemedicine. Comparing how they think patients feel with the patients themselves they are rather optimistic. The surveys asked about satisfaction with telemedicine:

HCPs may simply have selective memories for the patients who say they are happy with the service.

Here, we have compared HCP and patient answers for questions that, ahem, aren't worded exactly the same (we recommend you check the source -Ed.). Here, we have highlighted the variances with the HCP questions.

This is all we can fit into an admittedly long Wire story, for the full 30-page report full of data and charts head over to the Doximity site.

Sermo's latest Barometer study looks at weight-loss drugs, especially GLP-1 agonists and how physicians view these products. The study includes data from 1159 physicians from seven countries and it can be viewed in full or by each country.

79% of physicians globally are prescribing weight-loss drugs with the top brand at 82%. Only one of the top 10 treatments is generic, off-patent (one of the brands mentioned is technically off-patent but doctors still refer to it by name).

Doctors don't like celebrities telling them what to do and the GLP-1 space is very culturally active. Two questions highlight this:

Brands are top of mind here as well. 69% of patients who request the products do so by brand name, according to the doctors who treat them.

Head over to the Sermo site to see the full data and play with them country-by-country.

Normally we would call this the yearly summary but Spotify has made everything "wrapped." 

The Wire wrap-up for the year won't be as colorful as the Spotify example. However, here is a wordcloud of the subject lines from the year. Each subject line represents the top-three stories in each issue (thanks, ChatGPT).

For a view into what readers thought was the most important, we took the top non-Klick links by number of clicks, and categorized them. These are the top categories readers wanted to see.

Also, 92% (46 of 50) of subject lines started with a number. We do love our stats at the Klick Wire.

These results track. Specifically this year we saw a huge spike in interest in HCP social usage. If you combine consumer & patient it becomes the second but AI as number two also fits our experience.

Do you have a comment? Want to see something covered? Just reply to this email, it gets to the author (and me -Ed.).

The House Bipartisan Task Force on Artificial Intelligence has been working on a report since February that looks at how AI is affecting multiple industries, notably healthcare. It also presents risks of the technology and recommendations on how legislators can approach it.

One of the exhibits in the document is how much AI is being used for drug development. Looking at these charts we can see that early trials dominate, showing how the wave of AI-assisted molecules is just starting to hit the market.

Anyone following the Wire knows that we like putting large documents into GPTs to help the audience get instant summaries and save space in the Wire. Use this one to ask the document questions, it is set to focus on the healthcare section from pages 200-220.

Dentsu's projections for 2025 put pharma in second place for growth, if not absolute spend where we are typically down around 8th or 9th place.

Political spending the year after an election takes its expected nosedive but most other industries are growing above inflation.

This budget is going into short form videos for use on social platforms, the platforms themselves, connected TV, and influencers.

In a 54-page report devoted to digital experience social media ends up on top. This report is based on surveys of 625 marketing leaders across three continents.

The bigger news than social on this chart is that the workhorse, email, is in second place and paid media is much lower. This may be a side effect of the survey being about digital experience which tends to focus the respondent on offerings like the website and other touchpoints.

Showing that the first chart wasn't a fluke, when asked about measurements they want to see, social reach was at the top of the list.

A full 99% of respondents are using AI and 96% are using it in their digital experience offerings. The way they are using it is spread evenly across many initiatives. It may take a year or two for the best practices to emerge and for marketers to consolidate on a few tactics.

Duke university's Health Policy institute held its second meeting on prescription drug promotion and digital marketing on September 24. 

The meeting had three primary themes. Here is an example from each.

Talked about streaming vs. traditional and where the channel is going. Digital viewers now span all age groups.

The Klick Wire has been following the disclosure and data tracking rules from the FTC for years (stories: here, here, here, here, and here). The law firm that provided this material calls Notice of Violation letters "Warning" letters, which they are not, but other than that it's a good overview of the past few years. 

To make this easier for Wire readers we created a GPT of the source document (it's only nine pages -Ed.).

Earlier in the year Klick announced a $1 million purse for employee-driven AI projects and launched an internal portal so that contributors could see what others were suggesting and build on those ideas. The project worked as designed with high engagement from employees and 100's of ideas submitted.

There were three projects recognized, but the top one will resonate with anyone who has put creative through an MRL process (or MLR, or PRC, or your own TLA).

* NOTE: the $1 million was the total purse, the grand prize was the largest portion of that purse.

As a bit of commentary (no -Ed.), this is just another example of Klick leadership setting aggressive goals, funding them appropriately, and sticking to their word. For anyone impressed by this, it seems like a good time to drop this link to our careers site (ok, that was acceptable -Ed.).

In 2022 36% of marketers said they were going to increase their attention on attention. In 2023 47% said the same. In 2025 we can expect even more attention on attention.

Have we got your attention?

The Supreme Court of the US has agreed to hear TikTok's appeal the lower court's upholding of the law that requires ByteDance to divest the social media app to an acceptable buyer or be banned. The court will hear arguments on January 10th. Mark that day because, while it's likely the court will stay the law until a decision, if it doesn't the ban will come into effect nine days later.

ByteDance has said that it cannot sell the app, at least not all of it, because the Chinese government won't allow it to export the AI content targeting algorithms that are the crown jewel of the technology. 

The company presented this case: 

To get a temperature check on social media for pharma, check out this article. It's not data-heavy like our normal fare but it has a lot of insights about social and how pharma can leverage the channel in 2025.

Here are the thoughts of Klick's Brad Einarsen, SVP Strategic Futures (whatever that is -Ed.) from the article.

The non-core platforms getting attention from pharma right now are TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

Keep these platforms in mind, and monitor the TikTok drama in court, for 2025.

A new Pew Research study looks at how Americans interact with social news influencers. News influencers are not a new phenomenon but are growing to the point where they are competing with established news outlets for reach and impact.

Any PR-related audience members will want to review this study. 

The demographics of audience members skews younger.

These younger audience members also say that the news influencers affect their understanding of the world.

And audience members from different political leanings say that they see more of their own material (agree with, and equal) from these sources.

As a rule we don't get into politics in the Klick Wire and we still aren't fussed about where you are on the chart above. The point here is that each group is seeing material they agree with vs. that which they don't. That is the echo chamber effect of the social algorithms. And, if younger people are getting more of their information from these platforms then they are simply reinforcing their existing beliefs rather than challenging them (this is out of scope for the Klick Wire -Ed.).

X does not get many pharma dollars, but PR folks may want to pay attention anyway as it's the top platform for news influencers.

These audience members get 90% of their information on new topics from these sources. That means that they are getting their "anchor" opinions here. 

This was a long diatribe on news and information on the internet but it's an important topic for PR and brand managers. Stay alert to what is being said online about topics important to you. In other news Klick has an excellent social listening practice (excessively promotional -Ed.).