Frequently Asked Questions

Lathian Systems provides innovative, online promotional and educational solutions, and sales effectiveness tools that enable life science companies to improve customer relationships, enhance product education, and increase sales. Our wide array of Web-based sales and marketing tools and processes is designed to accomplish one goal-helping you meet and exceed your marketing and sales objectives.

Lathian offers a Spectrum of Solutions, which is the first end-to-end, one-stop sales and marketing suite that gives life science marketers an integrated, comprehensive arsenal of sales and marketing tools. These tools effectively deliver brand messaging by making materials more accessible to busy physicians. Consequently, up to 20 times more minutes on brand message are delivered with online solutions than traditional promotional media. Our innovative Web-based approach is counteracting the industry trend of decreasing ROI from old and tired marketing tactics.

First and foremost, Lathian provides the leading technology and service solutions for relationship marketing in the life sciences industry. Lathian has the highest technology ePromotion and eLearning credentials, which has enabled our clients to increase market share and sales through innovative online solutions.

This market leading technology is supported by Lathian’s program management, which is the best in the industry. Our rapid delivery from program development to launch of less than 60 days is unmatched by anyone. The account management, content development, and technology teams collaborate effectively and seamlessly to achieve the best turnaround time of any competitor.

Lathian’s Fast Start program is uniquely designed to enable life science marketers to quickly decide what mix of solutions is best suited for their brands. Lathian’s Spectrum of Solutions allows you to pick, choose, and use only the solutions you need to maximize reach and frequency—without having to invest in the entire comprehensive Spectrum suite. Our high-value approach enables you to swiftly and cost-effectively create individual campaigns perfectly customized to your immediate brand needs.

The Fast Start program is all about (1) creating awareness and demand for a product still in phase III trials or 3 to 6 months pre-launch, and (2) driving trial and adoption for launch and post-launch products, and even for mature products. The Fast Start Program can be customized to match the solutions to the appropriate stage of the product's life cycle.

Our core competencies are building relationships, creating audience, and delivering strong ROI for our clients. These competencies are achieved through best-in-class recruitment of health care professionals, industry leading online content development, and comprehensive business intelligence.

Our experience and capabilities are integrated into a personalized service and innovative solutions approach that enables life science marketers to build enduring customer relationships. Increasingly, we believe the place to build relationships with physicians and other healthcare professionals is via Web-based interactive experiences.

After a program is launched, we send bi-weekly performance reports with the information available on our secure, real-time reporting site.

Like everything we do, it’s all about evolving relationship marketing and it’s all delivered online where healthcare professionals can spend as much time as they like, whenever they like, telling you what they like and don’t like.

Lathian develops sales and marketing solutions based on innovative technology and the power of on-demand, anytime-anywhere, interactive information.

Our Web-based interactive experiences enable marketers to reach their increasingly hard-to-see target audiences. Our online solutions allow healthcare professionals to obtain clinical and product information at their convenience. This highly targeted brand messaging delivers the right message in the right setting to the right physician at the right time—the result: enhanced relationships, greater reach, and maximum ROI.

Our content development continues to be the most innovative and impactful among all competitors. Lathian provides the best content production in the industry because we take our clients’ content messages to the highest possible level of interactivity. Our design and animation ethic is geared 100% toward translating our clients’ brand messaging to healthcare professionals on the Web. Each design, animation, interactivity, and media decision contribute to the goal of engaging healthcare professionals’ attention in order to deliver a compelling and engaging experience that changes the thinking and behavior of the viewer.

Our innovation has been recognized and praised by clients, healthcare professionals and industry analysts. As Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, stated in its annual eDetailing report: “Lathian excels in effectively communicating brand messages via the Web, with impeccable content. Its sample eDetails did an exceptional job of conveying complex medical content through a combination of graphics, animation, spoken, and written word.”

In short, Lathian is a proven, credible, and trusted partner who delivers the highest quality, behavior changing ePromotion and eLearning programs in a cost-effective manner.

Lathian’s content management module provides options, as required by content and target audience, such as: branching logic, mechanism of action, 3-D visualization, streaming video and audio, and interactive assessment questions. This module allows for any type of content from educational content to market research to be hosted on the site.

Lathian has been the leading innovator of ePromotion and eLearning for over six years. We were the first company to integrate Flash technology into eDetail presentations, and the first to use true multimedia and interactive video across a variety of Web-based solutions. Our innovative media capabilities are considered the best in the life sciences industry.

Lathian has a proprietary database of 70,000+ physicians and healthcare professionals who have participated in a Lathian program and have opted in for future invitations. This includes 25,000+ PCPs, as well as over 30 different specialties, including cardiologists, oncologists, pediatricians, OB/GYNs, dermatologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and allergists. We also increase our reach by having access to an additional 500,000 physicians and healthcare professional through our strategic partners.

In addition, unlike many of our competitors, we utilize a rules-based verification system that includes over 20 different rules to match user-supplied data with the verification databases. This system provides the highest possible verification rate without compromising the quality of the verification.

Lathian’s reach into the online physician community is one of the best in the industry. Indeed, as Forrester Research stated in its 2005 eDetailing Wave report: “Lathian scored high marks in recruitment, solidifying the company’s mission to effectively reach physicians and analyze their characteristics and past behavior to better predict future responses.”

Lathian’s account management team strives for personalized and prompt service. We respond to all client queries within 24 hours and send frequent development status updates via our clients' preferred method of contact (email, voicemail, etc.).

We encourage the use of scheduled weekly client calls/meetings to touch base on outstanding issues and next steps. We manage projects with MS Project/MS Excel and send updated timelines to clients whenever a change in timing occurs. The timelines clearly identify at which stages in the process we require client direction and feedback.

We use a proprietary tool to create automated regulatory documents, minimizing the turnaround time required for submissions. In addition, we use templates for all internal and external documents.

Standard timeline is 58 business days:
Planning meeting/client kickoff: 1 day
Receipt of digital assets: 1 day
Lathian inventories assets: 1 day
Lathian produces content outline: 10 days
Client reviews outline: 1 day
Lathian produces static storyboard: 10 days
Client reviews static storyboard: 1 day
Lathian revises storyboard: 4 days
Regulatory submission: 2 days
Regulatory review: 7 days
Lathian makes regulatory changes and resubmits: 4 days
Regulatory approval: 1 day
Lathian animates eDetail (with voiceover): 10 days
Client/regulatory reviews/approves animation: 1 day
Lathian tests and optimizes eDetail: 4 days
Lathian launches eDetail: 0 days

In over 6 years of extensive and proven experience in delivering innovative and customized solutions, Lathian has delivered over 2,000,000 minutes on message for more than 100 brands, representing 60+ therapeutic categories and dozens of specialties.

For each project, Lathian creates a multi-channel recruiting campaign including email, fax, direct mail, and Virtual Visit Invitation cards used by your field sales force.

We create and produce all recruitment materials for each project. The materials are made available for medical and regulatory approval. Lathian also deploys the recruitment materials and monitors each project’s progress to insure recruitment objectives are met.

Historically, Lathian has seen physician response rates in the range of 8%–19% for the first wave in a series of ePromotion sessions. The second session has historically had response rates in the range of 40%–60%. Lathian has found that several program characteristics influence physician response rates. These include the integration of a Key Opinion Leader (KOL), specialty targeted, honoraria offered, and the life cycle stage of the product being promoted, among others.

Lathian provides secure access to its real-time Reporting Web site where clients can review, query, and download reports for each program. Standard reports include Summary Statistics, Completions, Time of Day, Location and Market Research results. Reports to meet state reporting requirements are also provided. Clients have 24/7 access to data, which can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet. The report site also includes drill-down capabilities so the data is visible down to the individual participant level.

Lathian also provides bi-weekly reports, as well as final program summary upon completion. More frequent reporting is available upon request.

Yes, please review our published case studies, which describe the results our clients experienced with our Spectrum of Solutions.

Yes, please call Joe DeBelle, Senior Director of Marketing at 610.832.2305 for client references as well as other testimonials from both customers and healthcare professionals.