Just when I thought I have heard every example of meaningful marketing in the healthcare industry, my friend and coworker over at the Dose of Digital blog, Jonathan Richman, shared a very intriguing new example with me this week. It could be the start of a meaningful marketing trend that helps save our healthcare system.
This example comes from healthcare giant Baxter, the producer of a drug called Aralast. Aralast is a drug that was developed to treat alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency. This little-known disease is an inherited condition in which there are low levels or no levels of AAT in the blood. AAT is an enzyme that protects the lungs from neutrophil elastase (NE), another enzyme that is produced by white blood cells. Without AAT, the NE can attack healthy lung tissue. The result can be early emphysema and liver damage.
The “good news” is that only about 100,000 people in the U.S. suffer from this disease, and treatments from companies such as Baxter can help prevent the negative effects of the condition. The bad news is that there are only about 100,000 people in the U.S. who suffer from this disease, which means that many doctors and patients know little about diagnosing and treating it. What’s worse, it is estimated that 95% of those with AAR deficiency are currently undiagnosed. With increasing pressure on healthcare costs and insurance companies’ aversion to “needless tests,” many healthcare providers don’t stock and won’t provide the tests to patients who come in. Many patients experience failing health for years before they are eventually diagnosed correctly.
This is obviously a significant barrier for suffering people, and for Baxter in its attempt to make a return on its millions of dollars of drug-development expenses. What to do? Some might assume the leap to an expensive television awareness campaign, or even government lobbying to force doctors and insurance companies to stock the tests.
But Baxter’s solution is brilliant: The company provides free test kits for healthcare providers, and even allows people to order the kits themselves online to take to their doctors to administer the tests. Baxter pays for shipment to the lab and for the tests themselves, and sends the results back to the physician. It’s a significant added value for both physicians and the people they serve.
According to a recent news release, Baxter has tested more than 50,000 people since 2004. Of those tests, more than 385 people were positively identified with the disease. This goes to show how rare it is, and how usual healthcare economics just won’t work. In addition, about 10% of those tested discovered that they are carriers of the gene that can cause AAT deficiency, and by learning this information they can be better educated about their higher risks of smoking and the risk of passing the gene along to their children.
As people and politicians debate healthcare legislation around the country, I wish more positive light was shining on this example. I wonder what would happen if more healthcare companies were turning their massive marketing budgets away from interruptive awareness building and toward meaningful marketing programs like this. I think we can all agree that this would be a big step forward.
