The Problem
An innovative pharmaceutical company with a focus in the rare disease space required a more effective strategy for engaging physicians in their KOL consultancy initiative. The client had previously struggled to cultivate relationships with nephrologists which were a new area of focus for their product and contributed to previous consultancy meetings having low attendance and no-shows. A significant amount of resources (time & budget) was being spent with very little KOL engagement.
The client needed reliable and rapid means to engage nephrologists including how to understand pre and post education perceptions, get feedback on new clinical guidelines and advice on how to improve new online content.
Solution
Introducing KoLab – An AI Powered Asynchronous Platform For Engaging Physicians
KeyOps developed KoLab as an AI powered asynchronous platform built for life science companies to enable physician engagement unlocking critical insights. In this case, KeyOps worked with the client to put together an hour's worth of digital engagement activities which included a questionnaire, article reviews, editing of clinical guidelines and online discussion forums that allowed the client to get in-depth feedback from their target customer group. The embedded AI functionality supported the Moderator with a daily summary of the content including recommended next best actions. In addition, the AI tool collected all the KOL interactions and analyzed the data, serving it up to the life sciences company in an easy-to-digest dashboard format. Hours of reading transcribed reports were reduced to minutes so valuable time could be spent on strategy and tactics.
Context
Before KoLab
- Advisors came in with different levels of familiarity with the disease state. KoLab helped get everyone on the same page from the beginning.
- Gave advisors a chance to review key information and interact with each other in advance, which helped surface important themes, such as challenges accessing genetic testing required for reimbursement.
- This made the overall engagement more focused and efficient. They didn't have to spend time on background information and could jump straight into more meaningful discussion.
Impact
Business Impact
- Helped raise awareness and improve diagnosis among nephrologists.
- Identified what physicians are looking for in terms of education and where the knowledge gaps exist. Insights will be used to guide and prioritize future educational efforts.
- Found that physicians are likely seeing patients with disease but missing the diagnosis, so those patients aren't being treated. The insights will help identify these gaps in diagnosis and refine messaging to improve recognition.
- KeyOps' nephrology community and innovative software platform was critical in building new customer relationships that can be leveraged again in the future.
Karen was pleased with the responsiveness and participation of the nephrologists who were engaged by KeyOps. Traditional advisory boards are constrained by geography, scheduling conflicts, and small sample sizes. Asynchronous platforms remove those barriers while AI ensures you're not buried in open text data.
Comparison
Here's What They Had to Say About KeyOps vs Competitors Like Within3
The KeyOps platform is significantly easier to navigate for both physicians and the client team. The platform setup was simple and fast. Minimal effort from us. The user-friendly, interactive, platform was augmented with the power of embedded functionality saving hours of review time while amplifying key insights.
Recruitment was smoother and allowed for identifying and engaging new KOLs, especially valuable in a therapeutic area where they had no existing KOL relationships.
Ability to interact with advisors throughout the life cycle of the engagement which isn't the case with other platforms.
Great communication from the KeyOps team throughout.
Why KoLab
KoLab Capabilities
HCP Flexibility: They participate on their schedule, increasing response rates and engagement.
Faster turnaround: Insights in days, not weeks.
More reflective input: Time to think = better quality feedback. No group think or respondents nodding along at the back of the room.
Cost efficient: Run multiple advisory boards without the overhead of live meetings.
Compliance ready: Full documentation for MLR and regulatory review.
At KeyOps, we've seen how combining asynchronous engagement with AI can transform every stage of the product life cycle from pre-launch strategy to post-launch optimization.
