Caption: Research by EPG Health determined unmet digital needs of HCPs

When providing medical information online, enhanced user experience (UX) is the key to delivering real according to digital medical publisher EPG Health. Such is their reason for launching Medthority (www.medthority.com), to replace the company’s previous website for healthcare professionals (HCPs), epgonline.org.

Independent medical websites are HCPs’ preferred channel for accessing clinical information, with 96% rating them important (65% very important). However, finding and consuming relevant and up-to-date information in a congested online space remains a challenge, with half reporting ‘lack of time’ a contributing factor. Via Medthority, EPG Health aims to bring advances in user experience and personalised content discovery, which most HCPs expect from consumer-led websites but still lack it in their professional lives.

To develop Medthority, EPG Health partnered with Episerver, leveraging its Customer Centric Digital Experience Platform. Named a leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital experience, Episerver’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model uses Microsoft Azure, and was selected by EPG Health to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning enabled personalisation. The advanced functionality and features allow content on Medthority to be surfaced based on user profile, behaviour and peer activity.

Supporting patient management and treatment decisions, the mobile-optimised website includes content such as disease awareness, clinical trials, drug data, patient support materials and medical congress output. Access to these is facilitated through:

• Discovery - intuitive search, navigation and relevant signposting driven by profile and behaviour
• Relevance - recommended services, including personalised user dashboard and tailored notifications
• Convenience - functions like bookmark and resume journeys
• Format – content optimised, chunked and sequenced for ease of digital consumption

Caption: Medthority focuses on user centric design and discoverability

Free to use and free of advertising, Medthority is funded through pharmaceutical grants and sponsorship for self-contained disease and condition specific ‘Learning Zones’ and ‘Congress Zones’, including stroke prevention, transplantation and prostate cancer. Positioned within Medthority, over thirty existing Learning Zones (funded by drug companies including Pfizer, Novartis and AstraZeneca) benefit from the same functionality and features as the main site.

EPG Health’s Chief Digital Officer Ian Daley said: “Our research revealed that doctors considered epgonline.org a trusted learning environment with the right educational content. However, benefits could be amplified by providing timely relevance in a crowded space, whilst majoring on the user experience. Drawing on 360-degree market feedback, and enabled through Episerver’s technology suite, we believe Medthority will push boundaries for digital channel delivery within the pharmaceutical industry. This has just become even more important with HCP contact challenged by the COVID-19 epidemic. ”

Ian, who joined EPG Health from the Daily Mail Group in 2018, added: “We’ve created a more habitual experience for our users, one that will ultimately benefit all stakeholders – HCPs, patients and pharma customers alike. This warranted the name change to Medthority.”

Commenting on behalf of Episever, Joey Moore, Senior Product Marketing Director, said: “Episerver enables organisations from across the globe to compete digitally. EPG Health are an example of that, demonstrating an ambitious customer-centric focus and continuously optimising their Episerver solution to support their digital strategy and the delivery of highly relevant medical content to their members.”

About EPG Health
EPG Health is the publisher of Medthority (www.medthority.com), an independent medical website for healthcare professionals. Supporting modern digital behaviour and preferences, Medthority provides a trusted learning environment with convenient access to the content that supports better treatment decisions and patient outcomes. With an actionable reach of over a million healthcare professionals globally, EPG Health provides pharmaceutical companies with an integrated toolset to reach and engage their target audiences with key educational messages while measuring the outcomes. For further information visit www.epghealth.com/