IDS UK helps Gynecare UK with disease awareness - May 08

Reaching out to millions

IT'S A condition afflicting millions of women in the UK when they laugh, cough or sneeze but sadly many feel too embarrassed to seek medical help for incontinence.

When Gynecare UK, a division of Johnson & Johnson decided they wanted to alert women to Gynecare TVT, a day-case procedure for stress incontinence, they asked WIS (Waiting Room Information Services) to help. Since its launch in 1991 WIS has established itself as a cost effective way of getting information to patients in the right environment, at the right time.

WIS now has access to 38 million patients through surgery waiting room leaflet displays.

W.I.S Objectives

• Generate 50,000 enquiries in the first year for Gynecare UK
• Target the message directly at people with health concerns
• Capitalise on the surgery setting to prompt patients to raise the subject of incontinence

W.I.S Tactics

Having decided to use leaflets as a means of engaging with incontinence sufferers, it was clear the design of the literature would be key to its success.

In conversation with expert staff at WIS, Gynecare UK were assured that reaching patients as they waited for appointments in surgery waiting rooms was the best method.

WIS Sales Director Patrick Connor said: “Product managers have long known that waiting rooms form the ideal setting to communicate with patients: they enter a healthcare environment and are therefore receptive to healthcare messages. Add this to the very strong endorsement that the GP surgery provides and you have a powerful medium.”

The WIS readership profile fitted the TVT patient profile extraordinarily well – 29.6 per cent of people that attend doctors' surgeries are women aged between 18 and 39 years with young families. Another 39 per cent are men and women over the age of 50 years. The women in both groups are the key target for TVT.

Julie Wilson, TVT Communications Manager for Gynecare UK , said at the time: “WIS sounded ideal as it would let us target our message directly at people who had health concerns on their mind and who were moments away from speaking to a healthcare professional.”

To develop the right leaflet, WIS drew on healthcare expertise in patient information and followed some important rules.

To have the most impact:

• it's crucial that people can read the headline from across the surgery
• they must identify with the message immediately
• a sensitive approach is needed for subjects like incontinence
• clear type and bold design have to be deployed to make the leaflet irresistible

During the design process, a meeting with patients gave a real insight into how they feel about the condition.

It became clear they were sensitive to being thought of as incontinent and they explained that to prevent embarrassing leaks, they crossed their legs in a certain way.

This information was used to create a front cover that prospective patients would identify with instantly.

A poster in a similar vein was also produced for toilet doors and distributed to a network of surgeries.

Results

Gynecare launched their TVT campaign in July 2002 – and there was a phenomenal response to the first batch of 124,200 leaflets. Most of them disappeared almost immediately and Gynecare was advised to double the next print run to 240,000.

Patrick Connor said: “We knew that there was an acute lack of quality information surrounding this subject matter and so had an idea that the leaflet would be very popular among patients. The TVT leaflet was scoring a 97.8 per cent pick-up rate during the first quarter – nearly double the average.”

And the second larger print run also scored well with a pick-up rate of 89.2per cent.

The leaflet is still one of the most talked about by patients and has prompted many enquiries.

Evaluation

A high proportion of patients sought more information after reading the leaflet. According to Taylor Nelson Sofres research into the leaflet, 50 per cent of patients who read it consulted a healthcare professional and another eight per cent called the TVT careline.

During the third and fourth quarters of 2002 this equated to around 187,000 patients speaking to their GP, practice nurse, health visitor or pharmacist about TVT.

The cost of each patient converted as a direct result of the campaign was 19 pence and this figure included the printing of materials.

“This illustrates what can be achieved with a great campaign; even now the leaflet can be found in our stands and is still being picked up by patients” said Patrick Connor.

Follow this link to download the  .pdf Gynecare disease awareness document.

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