In this episode of The Dish on Health IT, Point-of-Care Partners (POCP) CEO Tony Schueth is joined by Brian Bamberger, General Manager of POCP's Life Sciences practice, and Peter Schnitzler, General Manager of Point-of-Care Media, to explore the opportunities, complexities, and strategic considerations surrounding in-EHR messaging.
Electronic health records (EHRs) have become central to how healthcare providers make clinical decisions, document care, and manage patient treatment. For life sciences brand teams, they also represent a unique opportunity to reach clinicians with relevant information at the point of care. But effectively using the EHR as a marketing channel requires a different approach than traditional digital advertising.
In this episode of The Dish on Health IT, Point-of-Care Partners (POCP) CEO Tony Schueth is joined by Brian Bamberger, General Manager of POCP's Life Sciences practice, and Peter Schnitzler, General Manager of Point-of-Care Media, to explore the opportunities, complexities, and strategic considerations surrounding in-EHR messaging.
Drawing on their experience in pharmaceutical marketing, EHR functionality, and media strategy, the group discusses how life sciences brand teams can leverage the EHR to deliver timely, clinically relevant information, influence provider behavior, and support better patient care. They also share practical guidance for planning, executing, and measuring in-EHR campaigns as brands develop their 2027 strategies.
Peter opens the discussion by explaining that in-EHR messaging is about reaching clinicians at the moment information is most relevant to their work. Unlike traditional digital advertising, which often targets broad audiences based on professional characteristics or online behavior, in-EHR messaging can be triggered by specific clinical circumstances and workflow events.
However, Peter emphasizes that the EHR media landscape is far from a single, unified channel. Hundreds of EHR systems serve different types of healthcare organizations, and the platforms and technology partners that enable messaging within those systems have varying capabilities, data access, and targeting options.
For brand teams, understanding this fragmented ecosystem is essential to developing campaigns that can reach the intended audience at scale.
Brian adds that the real value lies in delivering the right information to the right prescriber at the right time. Whether the goal is to help identify patients who may benefit from additional evaluation or to educate clinicians about patient support programs, precision targeting creates opportunities to make messaging more relevant and actionable.
The conversation turns to what makes precision targeting within the EHR possible and how it differs from broader programmatic media campaigns.
Peter explains that traditional programmatic advertising can play an important role in an omnichannel strategy, but it may not offer the same level of specificity as event-driven in-EHR messaging. Some EHR platforms do not participate in programmatic advertising, while others offer inventory that lacks the clinical context available through more targeted approaches.
Event-driven messaging, by contrast, can combine provider identifiers, de-identified patient information, clinical history, prior prescribing activity, insurance coverage, and workflow triggers to identify opportunities for relevant communication.
That level of precision also comes with responsibility. Peter stresses that the EHR is first and foremost a clinical environment. Messages must be clinically appropriate, useful to the healthcare professional, and delivered in ways that minimize disruption to patient care.
Brian reinforces that effective campaigns require more than selecting a target audience and deploying a single message. Different provider segments may benefit from different information delivered at different points in their workflows. Developing and continually refining those segments and messages is a significant part of what makes in-EHR campaigns effective.
While in-EHR messaging is a major focus of the episode, Brian highlights other opportunities for life sciences companies to work with healthcare organizations to improve care delivery through EHR functionality.
These opportunities include helping health systems and large medical practices implement workflow changes that support patients after a treatment decision has been made. Examples include making patient support resources more accessible, facilitating specialty pharmacy processes, and improving workflows related to prior authorization.
There are also opportunities earlier in the patient journey, particularly for patients experiencing diagnostic delays or those with rare diseases. EHR-based tools and guideline-driven protocols can help providers identify patients who may need further evaluation or testing.
Brian explains that these capabilities often require deliberate implementation by individual healthcare organizations. EHR functionality varies considerably across platforms and care settings, and even available features may not be fully utilized.
The discussion underscores why life sciences teams need to understand both the technical capabilities of EHR systems and the operational realities of the healthcare organizations using them.
With life sciences brand teams preparing their 2027 tactical plans, Tony asks how organizations should approach in-EHR messaging, whether they are exploring the channel for the first time or looking to improve existing campaigns.
Peter encourages teams to begin with their brand objectives rather than immediately focusing on available technology or advertising inventory.
What challenge is the brand trying to solve? What provider behavior needs to change? At what point in the clinical workflow could additional information make a meaningful difference?
Answering those questions helps determine which EHR capabilities, data sources, technology partners, and messaging approaches are appropriate.
Peter also cautions that successful campaigns require sufficient planning time. Teams must map the relevant data, identify appropriate workflow triggers, coordinate with multiple platform partners, and establish a measurement strategy before launching.
Brian agrees that in-EHR messaging should be evaluated against the brand's specific needs and the potential value to the clinicians receiving the information. The opportunity is significant, but the channel is not necessarily the right solution for every objective.
The group also explores what successful deployment looks like from both the clinician's and the brand's perspectives.
For clinicians, Peter describes success as receiving useful information at the right moment without unnecessarily disrupting patient care.
For brand teams, success requires demonstrating that the campaign influenced the intended outcomes. Peter stresses the importance of establishing measurement plans early and using test-and-control methods to compare the behavior of clinicians exposed to messaging with that of those who were not.
Because different EHR platforms provide different types of data and reporting, measuring results across multiple partners requires thoughtful coordination.
The conversation also addresses the importance of optimizing campaigns after launch. Brian explains that repeatedly delivering the same message to high-volume prescribers can yield diminishing returns and waste campaign resources.
Instead, brands should use performance information to adjust audience segments, refine message sequencing, and introduce different content as clinicians progress through the campaign.
Peter explains that this continuous learning approach can improve both the clinician experience and the efficiency of media spending. Each campaign interaction provides an opportunity to better understand what is working and inform future decisions.
Before committing to an in-EHR media proposal, brand teams should carefully evaluate whether the proposed approach can deliver on its promises.
Brian recommends examining the campaign's reach, the specificity of its audience segmentation, and the partner's understanding of EHR functionality and available clinical triggers.
Peter adds that partner credibility, experience, and knowledge of pharmaceutical marketing requirements matter just as much. Brands should understand how a proposed campaign will connect to actual clinical workflows, what will trigger message delivery, how broadly it can scale, and what evidence will demonstrate its effectiveness.
The fragmented EHR marketplace makes partner selection especially important. A single platform may offer substantial reach but still miss providers who are essential to a particular brand's strategy.
Peter explains how Point-of-Care Media approaches this challenge by assembling capabilities from multiple technology and media partners to reach the appropriate providers while avoiding irrelevant inventory.
Rather than buying broad access and hoping to reach the right clinicians, this approach starts with the brand's target audience and builds the partner network needed to reach them.
As the episode concludes, Tony asks Peter what one assumption or habit he would encourage life sciences brand teams to revisit.
Peter advises starting earlier and approaching the channel as an opportunity to learn, prove value, and expand over time.
The complexity of the EHR environment can make the channel seem intimidating, but brand teams do not need to master every technical detail themselves. They do, however, need time to develop an effective strategy, build the right partnerships, test their approach, and refine it based on results.
Brian adds that organizations should resist treating in-EHR messaging like traditional internet advertising. The channel offers more sophisticated targeting opportunities, but it is also less mature and requires a deeper understanding of clinical workflows and technology capabilities.
For life sciences teams planning for 2027, the key takeaway is to assess where the EHR can address specific brand challenges and support meaningful changes in provider behavior. With the right strategy, execution, and measurement, in-EHR functionality can become an increasingly valuable component of a brand's broader engagement efforts.