From the perspective of a 30+ year MD and the interim Chief Medical Officer of Frontrow Health.
There is a war being fought online for the attention of our patients, and providers are nowhere to be found. This must change.
Imagine if pharma companies spent $10 billion on ads directed at our patients who paid out of pocket to directly consume their drugs without our guidance? We’d be horrified.
Then why are we not equally outraged when other kinds of healthcare companies are doing the exact same thing to our patients?
Since the pandemic, $60B have been poured into digital health companies, more than 40% of whom have been blasting that money into ads directed at our patients, who are more confused than ever about what to trust online.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen a stark increase in the amount of patient questions I receive related to products they discover online from ads, influencers, clickbait, and more.
Without the guidance of a medical expert, how are they supposed to know whether Pill X safely “cures Insomnia”? Or whether Patch Y effectively “relieves all muscular pain in minutes.” These are all real marketing statements, used by real companies to try and sway our patients into handing over their hard-earned money.
I don’t blame companies for using ads to find more customers, but the reality is that it’s hard for people to separate the good from the bad. Luckily, there is good out there. Many companies offer consumables, devices, and other tele-services that empower our patients to act proactively, before we need to treat their troubling symptoms with prescription medication.
However, the question I get from many of my colleagues is — am I even qualified to evaluate whether non-prescription health products are good or bad?
My answer is…are your patients qualified to? Or better, are 27-year-old TikTok influencers with thousands of followers and no medical education qualified to promote health products to your patients? Because that’s the state of affairs.
So how do we, as providers, educate our patients, without burning ourselves out even more?
It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, and I’m excited to share one simple way we finally can: building a digital store, with Frontrow Health.
What’s a digital store? It’s a place where patients are educated about products you like. Simple.
What’s Frontrow Health? It’s a company that builds you a free digital store. Think Shopify, for providers.
Pick products from our pre-vetted list or add your favorites. Get paid every time patients click through products, regardless of whether they buy. And the best part? Patients save 15%+ on every purchase. Win-win.
Schedule a free 15 min demo call on our website to learn more about how you can finally educate patients in a way that’s low effort and financially rewarding for both you and your patient.
