A pharmaceutical brand’s target list can tell marketers which healthcare professionals have prescribed in a category, how frequently they write and where they practice. But identifying the right Point of Care (POC) audience requires asking another question: Who is positioned to influence the next relevant care decision?
Answering that question can change which providers, practices and settings belong in the plan.
POCMA’s previous examination of targeting challenged marketers to look beyond high-prescriber lists, reconsider specialty assumptions and explore opportunities earlier in the patient journey.
To build on that foundation, we spoke with three industry experts, Eric Talbot, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at CheckedUp, Kit Burkus, Principal Solution Sales at IQVIA and Sachin Nanavati, General Manager at OpenEvidence, who shared their perspective on the additional evidence that should inform POC audience and targeting decisions beyond traditional lists.
“Identifying an audience and understanding an audience are not the same thing,” says Burkus.
For marketers, that distinction is consequential. A list establishes who qualifies under an existing set of criteria. But, to go beyond that list, the marketer must also examine whether those criteria reflect the patients, information needs and care decisions the campaign is intended to support.
Five signals can help: patient volume, clinical relevance, growth potential, care-journey position and non-physician care-team influence.
1. Patient volume: Count the patients relevant to the objective
Prescription volume offers one view of a practice’s activity. But audience planning should also establish how many relevant patients a provider sees and what makes those patients relevant to the campaign.
“Patient volume is an important consideration because it helps estimate potential opportunity. But volume alone does not always reflect a clinician's influence, information needs, or role in the patient journey,” says Burkus.
When attempting to identify the right patient audience, Talbot advises marketers to ask, “What [outcome] am I trying to get to? And how does that differ within my potential target audience?”
Different patient populations within the audience might have different educational needs, for example.
And while the obvious choice is to prioritize practices that see a high volume of patients, a practice with a smaller volume of patients may still warrant inclusion, for example, when those patients face consequential decisions and have a clear need for relevant information. The planning task is to weigh that opportunity against the cost and feasibility of reaching it.
2. Clinical relevance: Examine what providers are evaluating now
Specialty and prescribing history help establish clinical context. But current information-seeking behavior can add another dimension: the topics a clinician is actively evaluating.
“Specialty tells you how someone was trained. Volume tells you what they did last year. A clinical question tells you what they are deciding this week. A target list is a lagging indicator. A clinical question is a leading one,” says Nanavati.
In practice, a provider who is researching a condition, reviewing new evidence or returning to treatment-related content may merit inclusion even if historical prescribing would not have placed them near the top of a list.
“A single research event may reflect curiosity. [But] the signal becomes more meaningful when examined in context. Frequency, recency, clinical specificity, and consistency over time all help distinguish casual interest from sustained evaluation,” Burkus explains.
Nanavati reinforces that consistency is critical to understanding research-based intent signals, noting, “When every user is identity verified and the same clinician comes back with questions over days and weeks, the pattern is visible. You are not inferring intent from a cookie. You are reading it from the questions.”
A media partner should be able to explain how it distinguishes an isolated signal from a meaningful pattern, how recently the activity occurred and how it establishes the identity of the HCP involved. Those signals should inform a hypothesis about relevance.
A case study Burkus highlighted offers a practical example of how this approach can improve audience reach and media efficiency. CMI Media Group and IQVIA Digital added an AIM XR behavioral audience segment based on HCPs researching competitors and disease states to an existing audience strategy that included target lists, specialties, diagnosis and prescribing data.
The campaign used the same branded creative and compared two 48-day periods, one before and one after the behavioral segment was introduced. The published case study reported approximately 22% greater HCP reach and a 62% decrease in cost per thousand impressions (CPM), with similar impression volume.
These results come from a single Meta awareness campaign and a comparison across different time periods. But they illustrate the potential value of supplementing traditional audience criteria with current information needs, while leaving room to test how that approach performs in other settings.
Nanavati also describes brands that ran traditional NPI-targeted programs alongside contextual programs built around clinicians’ information needs, with third-party matched-control measurement.
“When those brands showed up with relevant evidence at the moment of the question, the measured lift in new treatments came disproportionately from outside the original list.”
For planners, that makes audience expansion a testable proposition: can the campaign identify and engage relevant clinicians whom the original targeting criteria missed?
3. Growth potential: Understand why prescribing is low
Low prescribing volume does not automatically establish untapped opportunity. But it creates a question worth investigating.
“The goal is not simply to identify activity. It is to determine whether that activity reflects opportunity, uncertainty, or even friction,” says Burkus.
Burkus notes that there are some low prescribing situations that can be addressed with marketing and others where investment would not move the needle.
“Active research activity combined with a relevant patient population may indicate an addressable information need. By contrast, sustained interest without corresponding adoption may suggest access, reimbursement, or operational barriers that education alone is unlikely to resolve,” Burkus explains.
Evaluate growth potential by bringing the signals together. Does the provider see relevant patients? Is there sustained interest in the condition or treatment category? What information appears to be needed? What could prevent an appropriate treatment decision from translating into initiation?
Nanavati suggests a clear signal to look for when evaluating growth potential is a clinician who is asking about the category but has not written in it. Questions about diagnosis, eligibility, sequencing or dosing from someone with no prescribing history are a strong sign that the patient is in front of them and the decision is live.
“We have now seen this measured with matched-control methodology rather than platform metrics: across seven contextual campaigns analyzed by IQVIA, clinicians with no prescribing history in the category converted into first-time writers in every one. Those clinicians were researching the question, and when relevant evidence was there, they acted.”
The finding gives marketers a reason to test whether current information needs can help identify potential audiences that prescribing history alone would overlook. Evaluating that opportunity requires examining how conversion compares with the control group and whether the new writers were outside the original target list.
4. Care-journey position: Identify decisions before and after prescribing
An audience organized around the prescribing event can overlook the encounters that make that event possible, as well as the support patients need afterward.
Talbot illustrates the opportunity through the conversations that can begin in dermatology before a patient reaches oncology.
“You know where the first conversation comes in about cancer and melanoma? It comes up with that dermatologist.”
For audience planning, the example prompts a practical question: where could relevant education help prepare a patient for the next conversation about care? Those earlier encounters deserve consideration even when the provider is not the eventual treatment prescriber.
“Before the decision, the questions are about recognition and eligibility: does this patient qualify, what should I test, who should I refer to,” says Nanavati. “During the decision, they are about selection and execution: which option, how to sequence it, how to dose, how to get it approved and what to check first. After the decision, the questions turn to monitoring, side effects, adherence, and what to do when the first option is not working.”
Mapping those questions helps clarify where audiences and messages should change.
In an example spotlighting severe asthma, Burkus explains: “A primary care clinician may initially need support identifying uncontrolled disease, recognizing progression, and understanding when referral is warranted. At that stage, content focused on disease recognition and referral criteria may be most relevant.”
Later, “Once treatment begins, additional stakeholders often become critical. Pharmacists, nurses, office staff, and access-support teams may help patients navigate reimbursement challenges, prior authorizations, administration requirements, and adherence hurdles.”
Build the audience map around these distinct jobs. For each stage, specify who is involved, what information is useful and which POC environment can deliver it appropriately. Patient-facing education in a waiting room and professional information within a clinical workflow serve different needs, even when they support the same overall objective.
5. Care-team influence: Plan around responsibilities
As Burkus notes above, an audience strategy should also account for the professionals who help patients understand, access and manage care, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists and nurses.
“Plan to the question, not the credential,” says Nanavati.
For marketers, this means evaluating responsibilities within the relevant practice and care setting. Avoid assuming that a professional title fully explains someone’s role, or that inclusion in an audience automatically calls for the same content.
“Many information needs overlap across the care team. Physicians, NPs, PAs, pharmacists, and nurses all require credible evidence, safety information, treatment updates, and a clear understanding of where a therapy fits into clinical practice. But the specific questions they need answered often differ,” says Burkus.
The audience brief should make those differences actionable. Specify which responsibilities matter to the campaign, what information supports them and how the planned placement reaches the person performing that work.
Before approving the audience: A five-signal checklist
Use these questions to review the proposed audience with brand, agency, analytics and POC partners:
- Patient volume: Have we defined the relevant patient population, do we understand the methodology for how that patient volume is determined and have we considered practices with smaller volumes of highly relevant patients?
- Clinical relevance: Do specialty, patient mix and current information needs support inclusion? And can the partner explain signal quality, recency, identity and privacy protections?
- Growth potential: Is there evidence of an addressable opportunity? Have we distinguished educational needs from access or operational barriers?
- Care-journey position: Does the plan cover the decisions relevant to our objective before, during and after treatment selection, with appropriate messages for each?
- Care-team influence: Have we included the professionals who perform the relevant work and tailored content to their responsibilities?
Then establish how the expanded audience will be evaluated. Define the additional segment, the outcome it should influence and the comparison needed to determine whether the change adds value. A high match rate against the original list cannot, by itself, answer whether the plan reaches valuable audiences beyond it.
“To determine whether an enhanced audience improves on an existing approach, marketers should use a structured test design, such as a randomized holdout, matched control, or other predefined comparison framework,” says Burkus.
Going beyond the target list should produce a clearer rationale for investment. Every additional audience should have a defined connection to the campaign objective, a relevant information need and a credible way to evaluate its contribution.
The next planning conversation can start with the existing list. But it should also make room for the patients, providers and care decisions that list may leave out.