Understanding US healthcare provider preferences for consumption of publication content: opportunities to leverage omnichannel approaches

Understanding the healthcare provider (HCP) journey of discovering and consuming medical and scientific information is critical for optimizing publication reach. A survey was conducted in 2019-2020 to understand how HCPs in the United States discover, review, and share publications of interest. A follow-up survey was conducted in 2021-2022 to assess how HCP behavior in the United States has evolved over the past 2 years, including due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expanding on the survey completed in March 2020, a 24-question, online survey was conducted via SurveyMonkey. Survey invitations were sent via email list, social media, and personal outreach to practicing US-based HCPs with MD or DO degrees.

Thirty-nine HCPs responded in 2020. Of the 33 HCPs who responded in 2021-2022, 67% were community practitioners; 45% had practiced for >20 years, while 30% had practiced for <5 years. Medical media channels (preferred by 73%) were the most common means of discovering publications of interest (vs targeted PubMed/Embase searches in early 2020). Sixty-seven percent of HCPs found supplemental digital information (also called publication enhancers) moderately/very useful for understanding article content vs 56% in the 2020 survey. When asked about pandemic-related behavior changes, HCPs reported increases in social media use (55%), medical media use (52%), direct reading of research articles (45%), accessing supplemental digital information (39%), and sharing/recommending articles to colleagues (33%).

These survey results suggest that how HCPs interact with publication content is evolving and that these changes appear accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This evolution is important to understand, and be accounted for, in the framework of omnichannel publication planning.