Spectrum Science on Tech's Role in Minimizing the Health Equity Gap

Muse: How does your agency collaborate with healthcare professionals, organizations, or stakeholders to advance health equity and reduce health disparities?

Spectrum Science: At Spectrum, we actively work to infuse diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) into our ways of working—internally and for our clients. We understand how embracing diverse perspectives on our internal teams strengthens our ability to counsel clients and ultimately better the lives of healthcare professionals and patients. That’s why we’ve equipped our teams with individuals from different backgrounds and we continue to work with DE&I experts to evaluate client campaigns and projects with diverse target audiences.

As communicators in healthcare, we have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to address the health equity gap. Our strength lies in strategic, empathetic and compelling storytelling where people can see themselves and feel they belong. From education to authentic engagement and restoring trust, we can reach underrepresented communities, develop communications materials that resonate with diverse audiences, raise awareness on disease states impacting population groups and use communications channels and sticky creative that will reach audiences.

For example, Spectrum recently developed a psoriasis campaign for a client, which aimed to show how the disease shows up differently for people of color and largely misdiagnosed populations. In the past, we’ve also tapped influencers or notable individuals with a connection to a specific disease to whom the patient population trusts—such as Debbie Allen and Shaquille O’Neal.

Additionally, Spectrum’s DE&I Council and Corporate Social Responsibility committee aim to reduce health inequalities through volunteering, educational and awareness campaigns, donations and internal initiatives.

In what ways does your agency leverage innovation and emerging technologies to enhance the effectiveness and reach of your health and wellness marketing efforts?

In today’s connected world, one channel cannot effectively reach audiences and change behavior. They must work together. Leading with innovative and proprietary technology, Spectrum creates hyper-targeted, personalized and connected experiences to reach audiences where they are with the information they want and need.

Galileo6 (G6): G6 serves as a data-driven platform that uses highly integrated data to derive meaningful insights that drive a holistic media campaign and allows clients to optimize strategies in real time and identify gaps. At its core, G6 helps better understand audiences and their interests, identifies opportunities to improve their experiences, uses attribution tracking to determine what worked well and what did not, and visualizes the data in an easily digestible way.

TrialBlazer: Spectrum’s dedication to innovation is helping tackle every area of health communications, including clinical trials. Earlier this year, Spectrum launched its patient recruitment software solution, TrialBlazer, which accelerates clinical trial enrollment by providing a frictionless online experience for potential study participants, with the power to aggregate data across more than 500 data points.

Share any success stories or specific metrics that demonstrate the positive outcomes achieved through these efforts.

Examples of Spectrum’s success with data aggregation and innovation can be found in some of its most recent clinical trial recruitment (CTR) campaigns. For a large pharmaceutical client, we were able to utilize G6 to aggregate nearly a dozen different data sources, which enabled us to identify specific points in the CTR funnel that were causing recruitment delays. This analysis and our proposed solutions resulted in a 10x improvement in the referral-to-randomization rate and led to the study being filled more than four months ahead of expectations.

With the help of our proprietary technology solutions, another client looking to bolster its CTR efforts for a flu vaccine also exceeded campaign and enrollment goals. The campaign resulted in 514 randomizations, nearly 500 percent of its original randomization goal. Close to 89 percent of those who completed the pre-screener were eligible for the study, significantly exceeding the original projection of 60 percent. Additionally, cost metrics exceeded expectations across the board with cost per pre-screener starting at 36 percent less than estimated.

Having access to real-time data and technology allowed Spectrum to be more efficient and cost effective for our clients.