Sermo news – market research tool launched

RealTime enables frequent, quick, short surveys with health care professionals to guide decision-making

Sermo, the leading global social network exclusively for doctors and the largest health care professional (HCP) polling company, today launched a new Agile Market Research tool, Sermo RealTime. Agile Market Research is an approach that takes its inspiration from Agile Software Development, which values numerous small experiments over a few large bets; rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaigns.

As opposed to initiating large-scale, expensive market research studies, Sermo RealTime enhances decision-making by enabling clients to rapidly test ideas and assumptions, and iterate with up-to-the-minute data.

“RealTime helps clients quickly connect to more than 40 specialties of doctors, as well as dentists, nurses, and other healthcare professionals,” said Mark Antonacci, EVP and Global Head of Sales. “It gives clients something they’ve been clamoring for: the ability to repeatedly test their ideas so they can quickly adjust and strengthen their strategies. Instead of waiting months for massive piles of data, RealTime allows them to move effectively and efficiently.”

Now businesses can keep ahead of rapidly changing environments, and pivot with the confidence that comes from relevant, actionable data and insights.

Sermo RealTime is Different than Anything Else on the Market

Sermo RealTime is the world’s fastest and easiest to use HCP research tool that makes it possible to query nearly two million verified, real-world HCPs from around the globe within minutes.

Unparalleled Reach
Sermo RealTime taps into the world’s biggest, highest-quality global proprietary HCP panel – including doctors in 80 countries and more than 40 percent of all U.S. physicians.

Better Targeting
Sermo RealTime allows for advanced targeting by specialty and geographical location, as well as by disease state to ensure clients reach doctors who actively treat the conditions they are most interested in. Sermo RealTime has 200 medical conditions to choose from, and plans to add more in the future.

More Engaged Respondents
Sermo doctors are part of the world’s leading social network exclusively for physicians. They actively connect and talk about real-world medicine every day, leading to more interest in market research and higher response rates.

With a larger network, nuanced targeting options, and respondents who want to be heard, Sermo RealTime provides the highest-quality data in unprecedented timeframes.

Sermo RealTime Revolutionizes Clinical Trial Development

Sermo RealTime is ideal for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies to conduct directional research prior to investing in extensive, costly studies.

One user who is the head of innovation at a major pharmaceutical company said, “Typically no market research is done with HCPs prior to clinical trial development. The normal practice is to access a few Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), who are typically disconnected from the real world of medicine. It sometimes takes five months to develop a protocol, and often mistakes are made, which are incredibly costly. With RealTime, we were able to test assumptions with hundreds of real world doctors on an ongoing basis and develop our protocol within five weeks.”

“Today, decisions need to be made quickly and more often to stay ahead of the competition and on top of market dynamics,” said Peter Kirk, CEO of Sermo. “Many decisions are being based on assumptions, not on HCP insight. When those assumptions turn out to be wrong, especially in clinical trial development, clients lose extraordinary amounts of money and time. The flexibility and speed offered by Sermo RealTime will help them make more informed decisions, so they can develop and commercialize drugs faster and more cost-effectively.”

Sermo RealTime Helps PR, Advertising and Marketing Agencies Win New Business and Build Successful Campaigns

Sermo RealTime is used by public relations, marketing and advertising agencies to test strategies, so they can adjust before proposing them to new and current clients.

“For a strategic pitch, Dudnyk utilized RealTime to help build a highly clinical story with specialty physician insights,” said the president of Dudnyk, a health care marketing agency. “We appreciate the support, service and delivering on tight timelines.”

An executive from a PR firm echoed the sentiment, noting, “RealTime allowed our agency to be a step ahead of the game with real-time insights and data that was critical for us to win recent pitch business.”

Beyond strengthening pitches for new business, agencies use Sermo RealTime to validate recommendations to their clients.

“Rather than wasting time in a conference room getting hung up on terminologies and individual words in messages and trying to get into the minds of physicians, we were able to do a quick test with actual cardiologists,” said a vice president at a PR firm.

Sermo Solutions

Sermo RealTime is part of the Sermo Intelligence Solutions portfolio. Sermo also has Engagement products – including Sermo Pages, sponsored posts and display media – that enable clients to reach the nearly 600,000 members of the global Sermo social network.

Additional information about all Sermo business solutions can be found at https://www.sermo.com/business.


About Sermo

Sermo is the leading social network for physicians – the world’s largest virtual doctors’ lounge where doctors talk real world medicine. Sermo’s mission is to revolutionize real world medicine by providing physicians a safe, private and trusted platform for free and open dialogue on an unprecedented global scale. Sermo has close to 600,000 fully verified and licensed members and is now available for doctors in 30 countries: the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Argentina, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, France, Finland, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Israel, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Poland and Germany.

Sermo is also the world’s largest health care professional polling company with 1.8 million HCPs in both the social network and a digital research network, spanning 80 countries. Sermo conducts 700,000 surveys a year. Learn more at www.sermo.com.

Media Contacts:

Elizabeth Donovan Wells, Racepoint Global
ewells@racepointglobal.com;
o:+1.202.517.1386

Osnat Benshoshan, Chief Marketing Officer, Sermo
osnat.benshoshan@sermo.com