epocrates Delivered Clinical and Commercial Innovation in 2023, Building a Foundation for Scale, Impact, and Engagement for its 1 million+ Physician User Base
epocrates, an athenahealth, Inc. company that delivers digital clinical decision support to prescribers, today shared how key product enhancements in 2023 have improved clinician experience and engagement for the more than one million U.S. clinicians epocrates serves. The company continues to maintain a strong, industry-leading 90%+ retention among registered healthcare professionals in key specialties by revamping its app and web platforms, broadening clinical news coverage, and deploying personalized algorithms for content delivery.
Product enhancements
The home screen and newsfeed are core experiences for epocrates users, and the company made several updates to bring educational and actionable information more front and center for clinicians. These updates include a new home page newsfeed on epocrates web, calls to action on newsfeed articles, and enhanced interactive functionality. The newsfeed also offers quick continuing medical education (CME) activities that offer free credits for reading selected practice-changing updates from key medical journals, scientific breakthroughs, infectious disease outbreaks, and popular consumer health trends that patients may want to discuss with their clinicians.
These enhancements serve to streamline clinicians' experience while navigating the platform and offer information that may assist with patients they see in the future. Additionally, the newsfeed is now personalized based on clinician preferences and behavior, creating a more tailored experience by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning models. Results from this personalization include:
- 150% increase in total monthly impressions from January to December 2023
- 800% increase in article click-through rate (excluding picture quizzes) from January to December 2023
- 157% increase in active monthly epocrates users from January to December 2023
- 23% increase in the number of clinicians engaging in our Continuing Medical Education platform; offering clinicians free access to hundreds of series and live events
Group accounts
In October, epocrates+ group was rolled out to provide institutions the ability to offer the benefit of an epocrates+ subscriptions at scale. A dedicated team focused on servicing the needs of health systems, universities, and ambulatory practices was established to assist in deploying institutional membership access. This new offering meets the needs of institutions across the country eager to equip their medical professionals with access to clinical guidance at their fingertips.
"We're pleased to partner with epocrates to be able to provide our team with access to premium epocrates+ content to ensure they have continuous access to the information they need to care for their patients," said Valerie Simmons, BSN, RN, VP, Clinical Services at Community Care Partners. "The ability to purchase enterprise-wide subscriptions was something we'd been asking for and are pleased to see that it's now an option."
Industry-wide insights
In addition to its robust and engaging product offerings, epocrates continues to be a leader in surfacing unique industry trends, including on trending medication topics. The top three most frequently searched drug-to-drug interactions in 2023 all involved Paxlovid paired with Eliquis, atorvastatin, or amlodipine; and the three most frequently searched drugs were GLP-1 agonist drugs Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy. While mainstream media picked up on GLP-1s in 2023, epocrates observed clinicians have been seeking epocrates prescribing information on this drug class for years prior to the recent media frenzy.
"As clinicians' time becomes scarcer, we must identify new ways to add value to their workflows and ensure they are supported with the most accurate, continually updated clinical decision support at their fingertips to make the most informed patient care decisions," said David Minkin, recently appointed general manager of epocrates. "Building off the meaningful enhancements the team developed in 2023, I look forward to continuing our investment in digital innovation and expanding our personalized approach this year to ensure we are an indispensable clinical reference tool and medical news source for clinicians, while helping our commercial clients engage clinicians at critical moments."
For more information about epocrates' latest features, as well as its latest offering, epocrates+ group, please visit: https://www.epocrates.com.
About epocrates
Since 1998, epocrates, an athenahealth, Inc. company, has served essential, clinical content to more than one million physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals. Centered around unparalleled drug prescribing and safety information, the app provides fast answers and trusted decision support in seconds at the point of care, enabling clinicians to focus on delivering the most effective and personalized patient care. Our Medical Information team is committed to providing accurate, current, unbiased and clinically relevant information, which is why epocrates has been rated as the #1 medical reference app for over a decade. For more information, please visit: www.epocrates.com.
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