Why Do Pharma Companies Need to Screen Target HCPs?
Let me answer one question first: Why do pharma companies need to screen target HCPs?
The ultimate goal of pharma companies is to let the right patients receive the right drugs, and physicians are the core bridge between drugs and patients. Suitable HCPs can accurately identify eligible patients, ensure precise matching with patient needs, promote rational drug use, and provide professional medication guidance. Physicians also treat patients with the corresponding diseases over the long term, allowing them to create medication plans based on individual patient situations such as age, comorbidities, and concomitant medications, and to handle adverse drug reactions in time.
When pharma companies select suitable target HCPs for academic promotion, they help corresponding physicians provide more precise and advanced diagnosis and treatment plans for patients and continuously improve treatment outcomes and safety.
Therefore, the logic for screening target HCPs must revolve around the fit between physicians and drugs.
- Diagnostic and treatment field fit: oncology companies should focus on oncologists and hematologists rather than cardiologists; antidiabetic drugs should focus on endocrinologists and general practitioners responsible for chronic disease management.
- Patient potential fit: prioritize physicians with high patient volume and a high proportion of target patients such as diabetes or lung cancer patients, including attending physicians or above at tertiary hospitals and chronic disease leads at community hospitals, rather than physicians with low patient volume or mismatched patient groups, such as promoting anticancer drugs to pediatricians.
- Academic influence fit: screen opinion leaders such as discipline leaders, department heads, and society committee members. Their clinical experience sharing and academic sharing can drive other physicians' understanding of the drug within a region more efficiently than covering ordinary physicians one by one.
At the clinical research level, suitable HCPs can ensure the scientific quality and reliability of clinical studies, including pre-market trials and post-market real-world studies. From R&D to post-launch optimization, drugs rely on physician-led clinical research, and screening qualified HCPs is the core prerequisite for study quality.
- Professional capability screening: choose physicians with relevant disease diagnosis and treatment experience, such as having led lung cancer surgery or being skilled in diabetes complication management, and with research qualifications, avoiding data bias caused by poor understanding of study protocols or weak control of patient enrollment criteria.
- Resource condition screening: prioritize physicians whose hospitals or departments have the required facilities, patient resources for rapid enrollment of eligible subjects, and research teams that can support data collection and analysis, avoiding study delays or termination due to insufficient resources.
From the pharma company's perspective, screening also improves the precision of academic promotion, optimizes resource allocation, and prevents waste.
Pharma resources are limited. Screening target HCPs is essentially about putting the best steel on the blade. Academic promotion such as new drug mechanism interpretation, clinical data sharing, and indication updates should target physicians who can truly turn drug value into patient treatment plans. Blindly covering all physicians wastes manpower, time, and budget. Sales teams such as pharma reps can focus time on highly matched physicians and improve communication depth, including detailed clinical data interpretation and answers to medication questions.
By gradually screening and optimizing, pharma companies can build a core HCP list and cooperate with these physicians over the long term on patient education, post-market safety monitoring, and other work, forming stable academic partnerships rather than short-term one-off promotion.
How Should Pharma Companies Screen Target HCPs? Six Dimensions for Full Evaluation
1. Define the Core Screening Anchor First: Align With Business Needs
Before screening, define why the screening is being done. Different business goals require different screening priorities and prevent directionless broad selection:
For new drug launch academic promotion: the core anchor is whether physicians can reach the drug's target patients and whether they are willing and able to communicate drug value to peers;
For clinical research: the core anchor is whether the physician's institution has research qualifications and whether the physician has diagnosis and treatment experience and research capability in the relevant disease;
For grassroots market drug coverage: the core anchor is whether the physician's medical institution, such as a community hospital or county hospital, covers grassroots target patients and whether the physician has prescribing habits for common grassroots diseases.
2. Screen Basic Thresholds From Professional Qualifications and Clinical Capability
This is the bottom-line dimension of screening, ensuring physicians have the professional foundation matching the relevant field and avoiding resource mismatch:
- Department and specialty fit: prioritize physicians in departments directly related to the drug's indications. For example, oncology targeted drugs should focus on oncology, further segmented into lung cancer, breast cancer, and other subspecialties; antidiabetic drugs should focus on endocrinology; orthopedic consumables should focus on orthopedics. If a drug involves multiple departments, further screen departments that frequently handle related infectious diseases, such as respiratory medicine and infectious disease.
- Title and diagnosis experience: screen by business needs. Academic promotion should cover senior experts, such as associate chief physicians and above, who have academic voice, as well as young and mid-career physicians, such as attending physicians, who are clinically active. Clinical research should prioritize physicians with more than five years of relevant disease experience and attending physician title or above, ideally with clinical research experience in the relevant field, ensuring they can judge enrollment criteria accurately and collect high-quality study data.
- Medical institution qualification: for prescription drug promotion or clinical research, screen physicians whose institutions meet requirements. Tertiary hospital physicians are more suitable for high-end academic promotion or complex clinical research, while secondary hospitals and community hospitals are more suitable for grassroots drug coverage. Physicians without legal practice qualifications, or whose institutions are on pharma regulatory blacklists, should be excluded.
3. Screen Core-Value Physicians by Clinical Influence and Academic Value
This step selects key roles from physicians who meet the basic threshold and can amplify business outcomes:
- Academic identity and voice: prioritize physicians with academic titles, such as members or young members of relevant Chinese Medical Association branches, heads of provincial medical society specialty groups, and department heads or deputy heads at tertiary hospitals. These physicians often participate in guideline development and academic meeting speeches, driving peer understanding of drugs. For academic promotion, also pay attention to physicians who have published high-quality papers related to the drug's indication, such as SCI papers or core journal papers, because their views are more likely to be recognized by peers.
- Clinical practice influence: use indirect data to judge influence, such as whether the physician is often invited by peers for consultation on related diseases, whether they have conducted regional disease diagnosis and treatment training, and whether patients travel across regions to see them.
- Past academic cooperation records: if the company has historical cooperation data, prioritize physicians who previously joined company academic meetings as speakers or chairs, or published drug-related studies in professional journals. These physicians are more familiar with the brand and usually cooperate better.
4. Assess Cooperation Willingness to Control Implementation Risk
Cooperation willingness is a safeguard dimension. It avoids resource waste caused by cooperation obstacles. Through early research, such as academic meeting exchanges, industry reputation checks, or preliminary communication, judge whether physicians are willing to cooperate. For example, are they willing to join patient education activities organized by pharma companies? Are they interested in the clinical value of the drug? Do they have time to support clinical research data collection? Exclude physicians who clearly refuse cooperation with pharma companies or hold negative views about the drug's indication or mechanism.
5. Refine by Region and Scenario Needs
Narrow the scope further based on the company's regional business strategy:
- If focusing on academic promotion in tier-one cities, prioritize physicians at tertiary hospitals in core cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou on top of the above screening;
- If focusing on county-level market coverage, screen physicians at county hospitals who cover surrounding township patients and have prescribing habits for common grassroots diseases such as hypertension and diabetes;
- If involving online patient education, additionally screen physicians with online consultation experience or influence in patient communities, such as those who often publish educational content.
6. Dynamically Update Screening Results
Physicians' clinical behavior, academic identity, and cooperation willingness change over time, such as title promotion, research direction change, or institutional transfer. Therefore, screening is not a one-time task. Target physician lists need to be regularly updated with the latest physician dynamics data, removing those who no longer match, such as physicians who changed careers, retired, or developed compliance issues, and adding newly qualified physicians such as newly recognized academic experts or newly licensed young and mid-career physicians.
Which Tools Can Help Pharma Companies Screen Target HCPs? A MeDomino Example
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Related Q&A
Q1: What is the primary dimension to consider when screening target HCPs?
A1: The first priority is professional fit and compliance qualification. Professional fit should focus on consistency between the physician's department or subspecialty and the drug indication, such as oncology drugs matching oncology and antidiabetic drugs matching endocrinology, as well as the potential volume of target patients. Compliance qualification should verify normal practice status and prescribing or research qualifications. This is the foundation for avoiding resource mismatch and compliance risk.
Q2: What capabilities should be emphasized when screening HCPs suitable for clinical trials?
A2: Focus on three capability types: 1. Research qualification: confirm whether the physician's department has GCP qualification, such as Phase III oncology trial qualification. 2. Research experience: review the physician's past projects, such as whether they led Phase II trials of similar drugs, and trial completion rate to avoid those with high project delay rates. 3. Patient enrollment capability: check the number of patients meeting inclusion and exclusion criteria seen each month to ensure efficient trial progress.
Q3: How does HCP screening for grassroots markets, such as community hospitals, differ from tertiary hospitals?
A3: The main difference is screening focus. 1. Capability dimension: grassroots screening prioritizes common disease diagnosis and treatment experience, such as whether community physicians are skilled in hypertension or diabetes management, and patient stickiness such as follow-up rate and satisfaction, rather than academic output. 2. Resource fit: prioritize physicians willing to participate in patient education, such as community health lecture speakers, rather than academic KOLs.
Q4: How do screening criteria differ between KOLs and KOCs, or grassroots opinion leaders?
A4: The core difference lies in influence scope and capability focus. 1. KOL screening looks at national or regional academic voice, such as whether the physician speaks at ASCO or Chinese Medical Association annual meetings, and prioritizes department heads and guideline developers. 2. KOC screening looks at grassroots reach, such as whether nearby community physicians often consult them on cases and whether they have speaker records at local small meetings, prioritizing grassroots hospital department heads and county hospital backbones.
Q5: Does a screened HCP list need dynamic adjustment? What should adjustments be based on?
A5: Dynamic adjustment is required. Bases include: 1. Capability changes, such as new high-value papers or new clinical trial experience. 2. Behavior changes, such as interaction frequency; if the physician has not joined academic activities for six months, cooperation willingness needs reassessment. 3. Compliance changes: regularly check medical insurance bureau and drug administration blacklists. If a physician has new violation records, cooperation should stop immediately.
