Companies worldwide see the iPad as the latest tool to connect with customers, and the healthcare industry is no exception. However, rather than as a consumer marketing tool or health application, some healthcare companies find the iPad’s biggest advantage is in the hands of their marketing and sales forces.
Healthcare and pharma marketers can—and are—evolving their approach via tactile computer tablets like the iPad. A marketer’s goal is to ensure that clients perceive and capture the full value of a company’s products. Given the increasing battle to capture customer attention, in particular within the generics industry, a sales force’s ability to effectively convey value messages within a short timeframe is essential. The iPad is a true marketing weapon because with it, sales can deliver value propositions more effectively, therefore maximizing a campaign’s impact at the individual client level.
Health and medicine are complex, specialized and ever-changing sectors. Technology like the iPad provides sales and marketing a flexible presentation approach, giving the power to communicate with relevant information, personalized to fit the customer’s needs. Rather than one-size-fits-all brochures or static laptop lectures, sales and marketing create individualized, interactive presentations. Furthermore, as IT and digital media become increasingly commonplace in the practitioners’ office, this reinforces the significance of multimedia and IT in the sales approach.
Internally, this technology helps marketers monitor campaign effectiveness with bottom-up reporting, giving real-time visibility to critical sales processes and data. With centralized information and real-time updates, marketers guard brand consistency while providing sales with flexibility. Finally, with iPad applications, marketing gains more insight into field sales activities, and can better understand internal/external clients’ responses to various messages. Consequently, the iPad helps perform closed-loop marketing in a more structured, effective way.
As an industry, we have just begun to tap the potential of this interactive new technology. Though the technology is new, our marketing goal remains the same: intelligent communication to help advance and improve health and medicine.

Antoine Jacques is marketing director, Europe, IBA Molecular