[00:03]
We need to understand that we cannot continue to address patients as targets. We need to understand that they are people who are navigating complexity. We’ve sought to stratify people from all different walks of life and to understand all of these different components as well as the complexity of how the human mind works in the context that they’re in. People ultimately have really good intentions, right?

[00:26]
People have really good intentions when it comes to their health, but life gets in the way, or, you know, our brains get in the way, right? So, there are things that get in the way and make it really difficult to follow through on those good intentions. We call this a data hub, and we call this a data hub for a reason because we’ve made systems and software to make it available for us to be able to use and pull this data much more quickly, much more broadly, much more succinctly and connected in ways that we haven’t before.

[01:00]
Hello and welcome to the MM+M podcast sponsored by Syneos Health. I’m managing editor Jack O’Brien. Today’s podcast is going to dive into what drives healthcare decisions. We’ll explore the story behind the Empathy Engine, Syneos Health Communications groundbreaking consumer data hub that’s transforming the way healthcare brands connect with people. Built at the intersection of behavioral science and emotional insight, the Empathy Engine reveals the why behind healthcare decisions.

[01:26]
We’re going to hear from the minds behind in the engine and learn how it’s helping marketers deliver stories that matter and drive positive change before audiences even know they need to hear them.

[01:51]
Before we get into the conversation, I want to introduce our two guests. Hi, good morning, good afternoon. Whatever time it is for you, I’m Holly Kelleher, SVP of Data Strategy for Syneos Health. And hi, I’m Kathy Moriarty and I am a vice president of integrated strategy. Awesome. I appreciate you both being on the show. It should be a really interesting conversation. Holly, I want to start off with you. Let’s start with the why with the challenges that healthcare communications folks face and what challenge in the space sparked the creation of the Empathy Enchant?

[02:21]
Where where did it all come from? Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So so often we find that hear patients talked about as patients, as a collection of symptoms, as a diagnosis, as a number, their epidemiology, their more information that feels two-dimensional.

[02:44]
And we don’t spend as much time as we need to and we found as a big gap to understand how to get at empathy, how to think of these as patients as real humans, as real individuals with full lives, with medical conditions, yes, but also with families, with stresses, with how they feel about themselves as a holistic individual, what’s important to them, how they think about information holistically and not just specifically to their health, although it does have a big context for how they’re thinking about about their health and their health care decisions.

[03:22]
Yeah, and I can jump in just thinking about if we don’t if we’re missing that perspective, if we’re lacking that empathy, how on earth could we develop communications that are likely to resonate with people who are navigating health conditions. We have to understand what they’re really dealing with, specific to their health, but also specific to who they are as people, so that our work resonates, so that our work connects with them at the level that it needs to in order to motivate the right kind of action and the right kind of behavior. I appreciate that.

[03:51]
And Cathy, I want to ask you this next question because Syneos really describes this as behavioral science meets emotional insight. That can be a a very heavy combination there. Can you go unpack it for those in our audience when you’re talking about those two elements and how they work together? Yeah, of course. So behavioral science sounds like a really big complicated concept, but to put simply it’s a study of people, right? It’s a study of how do people think, how do they act, how do they feel?

[04:19]
And so what we’re trying to do is get to that simplicity to look at people and understand the specific things that they’re dealing with that they’re having be about that they’re empowered by.

[04:32]
And so when we connect with all of those different drivers, all of those different factors of behavior, again, it allows us to take in this emotional insight, this emotional perspective, and really shift away from sort of who they are in paper to have a greater understanding of how they’re making decisions. I’m such a fan of complexity, right? But people are complex and even more complex in healthcare. Healthcare just adds so much complexity, right?

[05:00]
And so, I think when we’re able to take information and take data that’s coming through from our empathy engine, it allows us to look at all of these seemingly disparate pieces together as one and create a more unified picture. So this is is actually, you know, an opportunity for us to take some things that might seem at surface level to be unexpected or contradictions.

[05:28]
But when we are looking at them all together in this context, you know, there there signals of this complexity and signals of the of nuance rather than like a a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit or that we don’t know what to do with. Yeah, and And like Kathy said, looking at these complexities are all totality brought together.

[05:48]
So all of the different dynamics and all of the different relationships of all the information that we find out help us to look at these humans holistically and look at these different complexities. I appreciate that explanation. Kathy, I want to go back to you for a second just in terms for our audience. I’m I’m sure there are a lot of folks who are listening to us and they’re like, hey, I’ve been doing audience segmentation for years, like this in their probably looking at the Empathy Engine saying, like, what is different?

[06:15]
What is the value proposition there as opposed to these audience segmentation models or consumer data tools? What does that look like if you’re trying to sell that to these different pharma brands that you work with? Yeah. So, what’s baked in or really foundational to the Empathy Engine are these 24 evidence-based kind of proven psychological factors.

[06:36]
So, we cover everything from what influences motivational style, a health literacy see, barriers, trust in systems, trust in their health care providers, um you know, the extent to which people want to make decisions related to their health, like engage and share decision making or not. And Jack, there’s so much more than that. So that’s just sort of a sampling of some of the different drivers or some of the different factors that we’re evaluating and really assessing in this.

[07:06]
And Holly will speak in a minute to sort of the segmentation piece, but I think what’s also important to know is that we also have something called the mindset engine, our our two engines. And this is really focused much more specific to healthcare providers and is looking at sort of the why behind healthcare providers and the way they’re making decisions and what’s influencing their clinical context.

[07:28]
And when we take these two together, these are two different sort of proprietary sources of information that are grounded in psychology so that we can drive behavior change in healthcare. You know, they’re revealing when we look at them together, they reveal where healthcare providers, professional perspectives align or clash with the personal experiences of people who are managing their health. I would just add to that that it still has the rigor of a classic segmentation.

[07:58]
However, it at like that is a good thing to be able to have that rigor and that data model, but with the sophistication like Kathy mentioned of all of those behavioral values.

[08:08]
The other thing that I would say is that we we call this a data data hub, and we call this a data hub for a reason because we’ve we’ve made systems and software to make it available for us to be able to use and pull this data much more quickly, much more broadly, much more succinctly and connected in ways that we haven’t before. And I want to ask you, Holly, Kathy was alluding to it earlier in terms of driving forces.

[08:34]
I’m curious from your perspective, what is one emotional driver that people are constantly underestimating? And what does that tell us about how we choose our care. Everyone makes decisions in their health care journey, but what’s one that you look at from an emotional perspective? You know, I’m going to kick that over to Kathy because that’s a great behavioral question actually.

[08:54]
Yeah, so um you know I think when we looked at all of the responses and you know we knew going in that we wanted to approach this from a segmentation perspective. So we analyzed over 350 different psychographics and we found these two different factors that really differentiate the way people make health decisions. So simply it’s how much do I care and how much do I know.

[09:20]
And so we took those two factors and crystallize them into four broad groups, four segments. So it is like a classic segmentation, but it’s much more influenced by principles of behavioral science. Again, so we can understand more of the why versus more maybe two-dimensional responses that we often see in traditional market research. search. Definitely. And you talk about it kind of as a building block for the other parts of the operation.

[09:47]
I am curious though because as much as you’re talking about the value that the empathy engine can bring to the table. I am curious if you’ve ever had push back from a client or if there’s ever been tension because it can be something where it’s like you’re asking folks to kind of reorient their expectations and understanding of emotional drivers. Does that ever come to the floor and how do you navigate what is what I imagine to be a pretty trying situation? Yeah, I think that’s that’s a fair point um because this is taking a little bit of a different perspective.

[10:16]
For us, those are often exciting moments when we’re able to help our clients or even our colleagues internally see their audience a little bit differently than they used to before. So, I’ve I’ve got one example at the ready for you. One of our clients was was confident and, uh, you know, dare I say, totally sold on the fact that their patient audience was motivated primarily by empowerment and autonomy, right?

[10:44]
They viewed this audience as very independent, very self-motivated, very independent independently driven. But when we pulled in our findings and our our insights from the empathy engine and did some behavioral mapping. We actually saw that a huge portion of this patient audience was overwhelmed, was burdened, and was actually leaning on deference, right? They were waiting for somebody else. They actually wanted somebody else to make that decision for them.

[11:13]
And so that totally flipped our approach, right? And moving from, you know, messages, for example, that really highlight you’ve got this, you can do it. And instead told us that we needed to lean on you’re not alone, right? you’re supported, we’ve got you, your team has got you. So I think that’s a really good example of flipping the script on what we thought we might know or some assumptions or biases we might have about a patient audience and what we actually saw start to emerge in the data itself.

[11:41]
I appreciate you having that example there for our audience because I think that’s so key as being able to say like hey it’s not just that you plug this in and suddenly everything works fine and dandy like there are things that you’re going to be able to have to overcome. And I’m curious too we’ve been talking about a emotional drivers and what causes people to make certain decisions in their health care journey. What’s one myth about patient behavior that you’ve helped the brand unlearn? Is there anything that come to mind?

[12:06]
So, there is a myth that I feel like I will spend my career trying to help people unlearn, which is that if we give people more information, then we will change their behavior or that will be enough for them to act. That never That never works, right? It’s just never turns out that way. But we found that really knowledge isn’t often the barrier.

[12:25]
It is a barrier and there’s the time and a place for for knowledge and for information, but so often it’s really more about readiness and how ready or how how, you know, equipped is somebody’s environment in to be able to support them to act. People ultimately have really good intentions, right? People have really good intentions when it comes to their health, but life gets in the way or, you know, our brains get in the way, right? So there are things that get in the way and make it really difficult to follow through on those good tension.

[12:56]
And I think that is what is so meaningful about this study. Is so life gets in the way, things get in the way. So we talk all about these 24 different behaviorally driven variables, 350 psychographics, but we’re also understanding demographics and different profiling information and different things that make people holistic people.

[13:18]
So we could have each of these different factors coming into play, but like Kathy said, more information is is not necessarily going to drive you because we have to understand the context to which people are experiencing healthcare a condition or or different things that that they’re experiencing. And so I think what’s so important about this is we’re taking all of those pieces into account when we’re looking at how to better communicate to humans.

[13:47]
And one thing I just wanted to mention because we do right into all these exciting components around the behavioral nuance is just a little bit more about what this study is. Uh and so it is a nationwide study. We have over three 3,500 adults, so 18 plus included. We have 150 conditions profiled. So we’re able to look at comorbidity. We’re able to look at, you know, a sizable chunk of the population.

[14:15]
The old gold standard used to be like if you want a nationally representative study, you’re going to do 1,000 adults. Like we’ve sought to do um more and we’ve sought to stratify people from all different walks of life and to understand all of these different components as well as the complexity of how the human mind works in the context that they’re in. Kathy, I’m curious to hear from you. One of the the buzzwords I think I hear a lot from folks in the industry, both on the agency side and on the client side is patient centricity.

[14:45]
It’s like our campaign, our efforts, they all have to be patient centric. But when you’re looking at human centered data and data ecosystems, what does that look like in practice? How do you take that Buzz Word and actually make it a practical matter of business. Yeah. I appreciate what the Buzz Word is trying to do, right?

[15:01]
It is drawing finally more attention to the fact that we need to pay attention to patients that you can’t just expect them to fall in line and can’t again just expect to give them information and that they’ll adhere or that they’ll consider your medication or adopt whatever lifestyle change you’re asking them to make. But we need a different way to look at this. We need to understand that we cannot continue to address patients as targets.

[15:28]
We need to understand that they are people who are navigating navigating complexity. I’m going to keep talking about complexity because it’s so important and so relevant. And the philosophy that we have, which which Holly’s already alluded to is this idea that patients don’t really exist. Or if they do exist, they exist for a moment. Just for a personal example, you know, I’m a person who lives with type 1 diabetes.

[15:53]
I do not consider myself a patient unless I’m in a doctor’s waiting room or I’m on the phone with insurance navigating some sort of medical, you know, head up. But I don’t think of myself as a patient, but I in theory could if I adopted the attitude that, you know, that this patient centricity mindset has where I thought of myself as a patient all of the time. And I think that’s really important because these even these moments where we may feel like more of a patient do not define us.

[16:21]
There’s so much else that we’re thinking about and really needing to understand that our health has to be incorporated into the rest of our lives. If we expect it to be the sole focus, we will lose every time because that’s not how real people think and that’s not how real people function. So, that’s my that’s my perspective. We need to understand that, you know, people are existing and health matters, but it’s not always going to be their number one priority.

[16:47]
And again, there are things that we can do to help influence their motivation, but I think the more we understand and approach that from a empathetic perspective, rather than a punitive or judgmental perspective, the closer we’ll get to actually being able to be truly empathetic and truly patient-centric.

[17:05]
I’ve really appreciate having you both on the show here and being able to kind of break down what I think, again, or kind of the the buzziness around the industry of some of these phrases and being able to actually say, how do we drill down and make our businesses better for what is ultimately the goal here, improving patient outcomes? And And Kathy, I want to go back to you when we’re talking about patient centricity and being able to factor it into these kind of data-led practices. How is that being used for your business today and and with clients? Like, what does that look like on the ground? Oh my gosh.

[17:35]
Well, constantly and all of the time. So So, we’re using it in everything from thought leadership to, you know, new business pitches, to client to work that we have with current clients. Um, one thing that that we’ve been doing recently, which has been really exciting is using the data to create AI-powered personas. So, we will take a data from the empathy engine that reflects a particular population that were, you know, that represents our target audience.

[18:03]
And we’ll often pull in other data as well um in order to make it more robust of social listening, desktop research, even client provided information assuming that’s something that we’ve agreed to. And so then what’s really lovely about that is we can within that sort of AI environment, you know, get get get a read, get a check on how does this creative land with you? What do you like about it and why? What do you need to hear in order to feel confident that this treatment is right for you? Here are some messages.

[18:33]
Again, tell us what you like and what you don’t like, so we can use that to tweak. So You know, this is something, I say this all the time. These AI-powered personas would never replace talking to real people, but they’re a really important and helpful tool for us to use early on in our development process. So we can get a quick read, a quick pulse on how our work is likely to land or likely to resonate with our audiences and then move forward with more confidence as we do move into market research or other testing and things like that.

[19:04]
Thank you for that, Kathy. And Holly, is there anything else you want to add? So So, as I mentioned, the Empathy Engine right now is in the United States. We’ve made this robust effort in the United States. But coming next year, we’re going global with it, which is going to open up new doors in terms of different complexities, different nuances, different different experiences that humans are having. And so, we’re looking at a number of countries and we’re really excited to bring that back in the in the new year. Excellent.

[19:32]
Well, I look forward to seeing that global expansion and potentially having you back on the show to discuss where that all all goes. Kathy and Holly, thanks again for being on the show today and sharing your insights, especially about the empathy engine and we look forward to having you on the show again somewhere down the line. Thank you so much.