Manfred Beeres, BVMed - German Medical Technology Association, Berlin, March 2008

Abstract:
Communicating the value of medical technology is a big challenge - particularly in times of financial problems of the healthcare systems all over Europe.
Communication to patients and to a broad public is rapidly gaining in importance. For informing the public at large about the value and significance of medical technologies and new Medtech devices and therapies we need the mass media. This is in addition to – not in substitution of – the political lobbying work and close relationship with doctors and hospitals.
The overall goal is to get more attention for and awareness of the value of medical technologies.
Key learnings are: It takes time to establish our key messages and to promote our technologies. We have to realize that PR campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint. Associations, companies and stakeholders need to join forces. We need stories and tools that emotionalize. We need more patient stories, pictures, films. And we need allies in communicating to a broad public. To summarize it: Success takes patience and well-informed patients!

Keywords:
medical technology, medical devices, communication, public relation, Aktion Meditech, TV Service

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Background

The German market for medical technologies amounts to 21 billion Euros with more than 165,000 employees. Of the 21 billion Euros, about 9 billion are spent in the hospital and 12 million in the outpatient sector. Besides the US and Japan, Germany is the third biggest market worldwide and by far the largest market in Europe. It is about twice as large as the French and three times as large as the Italian and British market.

Marketing Success Model of the Past

In the past, marketing of new medical technologies was quite easy and successful in Germany. The success model of the past comprised the following steps:

• New product development
• Presentation at scientific meeting
• Dinner invitation
• Field force sells
• Doctor/hospital buys
• Product in application
• Sickness fund pays

This easy model focusing on the doctors no longer works. We had this “paradise” until the early 90s, but since then, paradise has been lost. Why? The German Statutory Health Insurance system (SHI) is facing a financial crisis. This crisis is due to a high unemployment rate, poor economic development, dependency of SHI income on the development of wages, government policy of SHI contribution rate stability and demographic changes.

Due to the cuts in healthcare costs in the past years, success is no longer a natural consequence of a product launch of a medical technology. Other important aspects have changed, too: Hospital procurement is more and more driven by administrators, not by the doctors. Another challenge: In Germany, patients cannot choose a preferred Medtech product over an SHI standard product and then pay for the “Delta”.

After the challenges that the system is facing, we should also mention some of the opportunities that are leading to a bright future of medical technologies in general:

1. Due to the demographic change we have a rising number of elderly people and thus also an increasing number of cases to treat in the healthcare system.
2. There is a growing interest in health care and wellness.
3. We are facing tremendous medical progress with new treatment methods. And patients want to be better informed on this medical progress.

Another “opportunity” we should mention is the attractiveness of medical technology. The Medtech companies have a lot of great stories to tell and to show!

Marketing Success Model of Today and the Future

The logical conclusion from this analysis of challenges and opportunities is that our marketing and communication tools have to change. In our view, this should be the marketing success model of today and the future:

• New product development
• Presentation at scientific meeting
• Workshop with sickness fund representatives
• Education of media
• Patient empowerment
• Grass roots communication
• Patient advocacy support
• Hospital communication support

This means: We need new communication tools for new target audiences. The four most important target audiences for the marketing and communication work of the medical technology industry are: patients, politicians/payers, physicians and the public.

Communication to patients and to a broad public is rapidly gaining in importance. For informing the public at large about the value and significance of medical technologies and new Medtech devices and therapies we need the mass media. Therefore, one of the main goals of BVMed’s communication activities in the past months and years has been to reach a wide audience, by way of yellow press or television magazines. This is in addition to – not in substitution of – the political lobbying work and close relationship with doctors and hospitals. Our overall goal is to get more attention for and awareness of the value of medical technologies.

Targeting the Different Audiences

What exactly are we doing in Germany? We would like to present four campaigns for each of the target audiences we worked out. Before we go into detail, we should clarify that the campaigns have one particular focus, but all of them include different tools for the other target audiences as well.

For example: The focus of the campaign “Aktion Meditech” is on the patients. However, the other target audiences are important as well. Physicians are members, speakers and promoters of Aktion Meditech. We have tools particularly for politicians and sickness funds within Aktion Meditech. And the public is in the focus whenever a new clipping is published in one of the yellow press magazines.

Communicating the Value of Medical Technologies to and together with the Patients

Aktion Meditech is mainly a media or PR campaign driven by AdvaMed, BVMed and 15 medical technology companies. The campaign is focussing on various technologies like wound care, cardio-vascular diseases, heart failure, orthopedics, eye-surgery, obesity, infection prevention etc.

The issues are communicated via website, newsletter, press releases, mat services or exclusive co-operations with individual media. We highlight our key messages and technologies through various events for media, patients and decision makers and offer information, support and dialogue to all stakeholders, particularly patients and patient organizations.

Aktion Meditech was founded in 2003. The very successful strategy of Aktion Meditech is simple: We communicate not as an industry, but together with the patients and the doctors as our natural allies. We have thus established a neutral platform with more credibility in the public. We have a two-way approach for Aktion Meditech:

• First, we emotionalize. We focus on “spectacular” and life-saving products and showcase them by authentic case studies.
• Second, we inform and educate. We focus on the cost-saving benefits and raise the point of ethics in context, for example with the DRGs.

What are our achievements after almost two years of Aktion Meditech? We have built a strong coalition of more than 50 allies. This includes patient organizations and single patients, physicians, health economists and nursing experts. We’ve also had ample success in the yellow press with more than 100 articles a year in woman or health magazines and a total of more than 120 million contacts each year.

In addition to the media work, Aktion Meditech is also targeting politicians, sickness funds and hospital directors. In the past, we addressed these decision makers on a regular basis with the Aktion Meditech news bulletin that is published four times a year. We also started expert roundtables to bring forward those technologies with reimbursement difficulties.

Communicating the Value of Medical Technologies to Politicians and Sickness Funds

Since 2005, AdvaMed and BVMed have been working together with PLEON on a public affairs campaign. The objective is to support AdvaMed, BVMed and our member companies in the political communication with the target groups. At the moment, the question of reimbursement for innovative medical technologies in the DRG system is in the focus of the work.

Instruments are contact management at the „Länder“ and federal level; the BVMed Forum „Medical technology & innovation“; the BVMed Policy Report; an Agenda on Innovations in Medical Technology prior to the election campaign; monthly monitoring reports.

One important focus of this campaign with PLEON is the Länder level. Germany has 16 Länder (federal states) that are quite independent from the federal level in many aspects and together have substantial influence on federal healthcare policy through the Bundesrat, our upper house of parliament. So far, we have visited the healthcare ministers and regional governments of ten states.

In addition to this work, we are organizing quarterly dinner debates with the Berlin representatives of sickness funds, hospitals, media and politicians. The issues include reimbursement of innovative medical technologies, the future financing of the healthcare system or: how can we support the „healthcare economy“?

Communicating the Value of Medical Technologies to and together with Physicians

The third best practice example from Germany is about communicating the value of medical technologies together with physicians. „Orthopedics move“ is an example from the orthopedic sector.

The information campaign is built upon a cooperation of physicians and the Medtech companies. The initiative is spearheaded by BVMed, individual companies and orthopedic societies. The objective is to raise awareness on the prevention of degenerative skeleton diseases such as back pain. The campaign seeks to raise awareness of the achievements and benefits medical technology and medical professionals are bringing to the patient.

The campaign is embedded in the WHO Bone & Joint Decade and was started with a kick-off press event with healthcare policy makers. Instruments include a website with a media center and an information pool, ongoing media relations, health information tours through German cities and the distribution of brochures and leaflets.

Highlights of the campaign’s achievements in the first year were the more than 65 million contacts via print articles and the more than 1,000 participants of the road show that visited ten different cities.

Communicating the Value of Medical Technologies to the Public

The fourth and last example: Communicating the value of medical technologies to a broad public by means of a TV and radio service.

Why has BVMed established a TV and radio service? The first reason is that health and medicine are matters of particular interest for TV. The second reason: TV broadcasting companies‘ shortage of money and manpower in Germany gives professional external material a better chance of broadcasting.

Our objective is that medical technology issues must be positioned more prominently in the primary mediums of television and radio.The following material is produced within the BVMed TV and radio service:

• complete films or telecasts for regional and smaller news stations;
• professional TV footage – that is to say edited and structured material including original statements on professional beta tape;
• a DVD containing all films to information disseminators.

So far, we have produced nine films and radio spots on advanced medical technologies and one image film on BVMed and the industry we represent. The topics are e.g.:

• drug-eluting stents
• pacemaker medical technology
• trends in endoprosthetics
• intra-ocular lenses for the treatment of cataracts
• refractive surgery for correcting defective vision
• modern wound care
• safety in intensive medicine
• patient mobility/infusion therapies
• tissue engineering

You will find the whole range of TV and radio material as well as a possibility to order the complete DVD on our internet portal at www.tvservice.bvmed.de.

What are our achievements so far? We take our film on pacemakers as an example. This film was shown in 12 magazines on 5 different channels – including the healthcare and technology magazine of the nationwide news channel n-tv, which is the German equivalent of CNN. A total of 1.3 million viewers watched this 7 minute film on pacemaker technologies, ICDs and CRT.

We also distributed all films via DVD to more than 900 information disseminators such as doctors, sickness funds or nursing schools. An additional 150 DVDs were ordered by further information disseminators. The internet portal had 300,000 hits and 20,000 visits in the year 2007. On average, films are downloaded 100 times a month each.

BVMed Communication Tools

We have presented four examples from Germany of how to advocate the messages and technologies of the Medtech industry. Strategies that have worked included allies and service providers.

However, in addition to these efforts, we should mention some of the BVMed communication tools that are essential in communicating the value of medical technology on an ongoing basis.
 
Additional BVMed Communication Tools are:

• BVMed Innovation Pool
• BVMed Picture Pool
• Case Study Pool
• Cooperation with healthcare magazines
• Media briefings
• Publications in healthcare magazines

The continuous supply of information is supplemented by weekly newsletters, an e-mail service providing the latest news and developments, as well as by press releases and monthly BVMed reports in English.

For the positive promotion of the medical technology sector's image BVMed carried out further projects, such as its own booth at the Capital Congress in Berlin, its press seminars on the "Trends in Medical Technology" as well as the publication of its brochure "History and Trends in Medical Technology", which can be ordered free of charge (German language only). On top of that, BVMed is actively involved in the image campaigns "Vitale Gesellschaft" (vital society – www.vitale-gesellschaft.de) of the federal association of German industry, BDI, and "Health First" (www.healthfirsteurope.org) of EUCOMED.

Just one example out of the list: Our „innovation pool medical technology“ is a web-based information and research tool for journalists and the public. More than 100 advanced technologies and devices are presented by the companies. We use new entries of the innovation pool for regular publications in the trade press.

While Aktion Meditech continues to attract a lot of yellow press attention, BVMed’s media work concentrates on the trade, daily and economic press. 2007’s media tools were, among others, press releases, press conferences, articles and contributions for magazines as well as media cooperations. 80 million reader contacts could be achieved with some 600 articles. Our website had over 1.5 million single visits an 15 million hits in 2005.

Lessons Learned

We would like to summarize the lessons we learned from our public relations, public affairs and political lobbying campaigns. Our key learnings are:

• It takes time to establish our key messages and to promote our technologies. We have to realize that PR campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint.
• Associations, companies and stakeholders need to join forces!
• We need stories and tools that emotionalize.
• We need more patient stories, pictures, films.
• We need allies in communicating to a broad public.

To summarize it: Success takes patience and well-informed patients!

About the author:

Manfred Beeres has been Communication Director of BVMed since 1998. Since January 2004, he is - in addition to the BVMed job - Deputy Director General of MedInform, an Information and Seminar Service for Medical Technologies. He is also Editor of MedInsight, a Monthly Report on the German Healthcare Market & Advanced Medical Technology  in English language. He studied communication and political sciences and law in Munster and Mainz and has been working as a journalist and editor since 1986. In his political career he was Head of Communications and Public Relations of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) Parliamentary Group, Spokesperson and Head of Communications of the CDU Rhineland Palatinate and  Director of Press and Public Relations in the Ministry of Health and Environment Rhineland Palatinate, Mainz. He is married and has one daughter.

Contact:
Manfred Beeres
Director Communication/Press
BVMed -German Medical Technology Association
Reinhardtstr. 29 b, D -10117 Berlin
Phone (++49 -30) 246 255-20
Fax (++49 -30) 246 255-99
E-mail: beeres@bvmed.de
Internet: http://www.bvmed.de 
BVMed -Enhancing Health

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