Every company needs a banner to fly. But what happens if you get the banner wrong on the first try?
We learned. In a major way.
We launched InTouchMD in 2014. The intention was simple: build a single-source multi-channel contact center.
My family has been in the contact center space for over 30 years, so the name seemed obvious: if we could create a healthcare division that acted as a single destination for pharmaceutical companies to engage with physicians on multiple channels, it would be a slam dunk.
We named it InTouchMD.
The name was another slam dunk. It described our services, our mission, and our target market.
Except for one little problem.
The “slam dunk” didn’t work.
2014 came and went with lackluster business. Ditto for 2015.
And that’s when we started asking questions: what was missing? What were the user frustrations? What did pharmaceutical companies and the agencies representing them wish InTouchMD would be, and how could we provide that?
So we asked them.
The answers changed our entire perception on what a good “banner” really was.
The first thing we learned will come as no surprise: the pharmaceutical space is 10 years behind everybody else. That’s for good reason – pharmaceutical products are not widgets. They can represent life and death to the user.
The problem was that this means that pharmaceutical companies often lag. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that pharmaceutical companies were 10 years behind everybody else on marketing automation, CRM, email marketing, SaaS, the cloud, segmentation, and real-time reporting.
Sure, these technologies were working for everyone else. Just not pharma.
We further learned in our conversations that the industry was plagued with profound inefficiencies. There were very few (if any) industry-agnostic technology companies empowering the pharmaceutical space (whether it’s emerging biotech or established pharma) to better reach, engage, and understand their target – HCP.
It’s an industry riddled with disparate data sources, lag in reporting, expensive technologies with no support.
And then 2015/2016 came.
We realized that while we launched InTouchMD with good intentions, we needed to change the entire business model.
Taking every resource we could toward executing the next iteration of InTouchMD, we launched the first product of InTouchMD:
Pulse Engagement Cloud.
It was a cloud-based platform that allowed the pharmaceutical client to:
- Email, call, text, and serve banners to the individual HCPs
- Leverage those learnings to know…
- …what content the HCP was interested in
- …what the HCP’s consumption habits were (from a time or device perspective)
- Run advanced segmentation which identified likeminded HCPs
- Create detailed campaigns/journeys
- Have a centralized database of all their HCPs
- Custom reports that provided real-time intelligence and access
- Connect with other technologies through APIs
In other words, Pule Engagement Cloud would be the go-to centralized engagement and intelligence system for a pharmaceutical company—whether you have one brand heading towards commercialization or hundreds of brands already there.
We found the slam dunk we were looking for. InTouchMD suddenly found its footing.
One subscriber came in. Then two. Then three. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Beyond the technology, we decided early on to make customer support a key pillar of InTouchMD. It worked.
We didn’t clock our hours. We did what the client needed. Truth be told, one of our core values is ‘Get it done.’ Our clients weren’t used to that level of support, and it was all for a price tag that made sense.
As InTouchMD grew, we launched new and exciting products.
- Pulse Data Access
- Unprecedented access to procure HCP (over a million records) and Patient data (over 30 million records), and enhance or clean their current in-house list
- Pulse Insights
- A unique view of all the learnings of Pulse Engagement Cloud through a visually stimulating, comprehensive presentation focused on actional analytics
- Pulse Sample Management
- An innovative approach to the antiquated world of sample distribution (pharmaceutical companies sending samples to HCPs) by providing efficiencies acting as a centralized HCP database. Meanwhile, we connected the brand and the vendors, and operated as the HCP communication/management platform
- Pulse Engagement Cloud (Patient Version)
- A technology that is built on the same infrastructure as the HCP version, but with significantly enhanced privacy standards, acting as the central platform for any and all patient (or caregiver) communication/data happening with the brand
As we kept launching new products, it grew harder to differentiate the name InTouchMD from the products that we were offering.
We took a hard look at industry-leading technology companies, and across the board, their name matched their product.
We decided to not reinvent the wheel, either.
On September 25th, 2019, we made a bold decision.
InTouchMD became Pulse Health.
We wanted to embrace our products and services.
Go all-in on the name Pulse and everything it represents. Finally, a banner to match the service.
Five months later, we couldn’t be happier with that decision. It was the slam dunk we always sought.
I am thankful for what InTouchMD has done for the company – without it, we wouldn’t have been able to find Pulse Engagement Cloud and a portfolio of important products that the pharmaceutical industry needs.
Pulse Health is here.
And it’s here to stay.
Under this new banner, we’re committed to being the technology company that this industry has needed for so long.
