49% doctors rely on online education for prescribing drugs: Curofy Survey

New Delhi: It is understood that new online revolutions are creating ripples in every sector. The medical field also hasn’t been untouched by the impact of digitalization. The advent of the internet has directed advancement to a newer apogee of merit in healthcare as a result of which prescribers are leveraging online sources to recommend medications.

The statistics represented on the survey carried by Curofy supports the notion that doctors are shifting their strategy of prescribing medications at an instant to consider resorting to in-depth online research before penning down drugs on paper.

To date, the drugs prescribing preferences of the doctor lacked a proper qualitative guide which focusses on authenticity. Indeed, drug prescriptions by physicians is a convoluted aspect impacted by different components. However, gone are those days when health specialists have to rely comprehensively on the pharmaceutical companies when it came to prescribing meds to their patients.

This study is an endeavour to recommend a value-oriented quantifiable model that persists to establish holistic connections between pharmacists, marketing professionals, online research personnel, and doctors whose decision is pivotal in prescribing the medications.

“The study is an absolute proof that the ongoing surge of Digital India even impacted the physicians who are referring to online platforms now and then for prescribing the medicines. Alongside, pharmaceutical companies also play a significant role in this, since they invest a lot of money to persuade these doctors”,says Nipun Goyal, Co-Founder, Curofy.

Insights from Survey

Curofy accumulated the data on its app to deliver a report that covered a sizable number of 1136 physicians. The influencing factors regarding medicinal prescription depicted in the survey are as follows:

• Peer Influence – 51%

• Online Education – 49%

A key implication of this survey is that doctors ought to be rational in decision-making, so, the research-based methodology is acknowledged by them to prescribe drugs.

“The involvement of doctors as key decision makers is the reason that they are the focus of most promotional efforts of pharmaceutical companies. Thus, influencing the doctor is a key to the pharmaceutical sales, and the pharmaceutical companies are spending a lot of money on marketing their products to the doctors”, says Dr Hardik Ahuja, Internal Medicine.

The Internet is a sturdy manifestation of information acquisition for every one of us to ascertain knowledge about anything; likewise, it is influencing the professionals of the health care sector. Thus, this primordially intriguing focused survey gave rise to a discernment that specialists these days are getting increasingly resorting to online sources to recommend drugs.

To summarize the finding, we can say that online data is progressively becoming a valuable tool for physicians when it comes to prescribing medicines to patients. Doctors are getting more inclined to solicit knowledge from online platforms for formulating prescriptions rather than blindly following what the pharma companies market them. Health specialists first analyze online case studies, check the credibility of drugs and then recommend those meds to their patients.

Dr Abhishek K, Palliative Medicine Specialist, commented, “Drug companies have long courted doctors with gifts, from speaking and consulting fees to educational materials to food and drink. But while most doctors do not believe these gifts influence their decisions about which drugs to prescribe, various studies have found that the gifts actually can make a difference in the decision making of the doctor.”

The massive data portals accessible online for deliberation ranges from published journal articles, disease prevalence and occurrence to drug monographs, prognosis to drug ADRs and prevention, and so forth, which are the real contributing factors for specialists to give a prescription.

Apparently, this poll is a confirmation that there is a stable shift in behavior and method amongst doctors.

Due to this behavioral shift by doctors as they move from a pattern that is followed for long to resorting to compelling medications that stand a chance of benefitting from it on a vast scale. As a result, this online research trajectory for a prescription writing may diminish the requirement for regulation, have less unfavorable impacts, and reform compliance in patients.