Increasing use of new diagnostic

The challenge

Our client, a biotech firm, developed a new liquid biopsy to transform cancer screening. Payers, focused on better serving their members, expressed interest in using the innovative screening method to more efficiently close gaps in care. To meet market demand, our client needed to develop a playbook to arm payers with a deployment strategy to successfully roll out the diagnostic.

Our approach

Behavioral strategy

Our behavioral strategy ensured payer partners were well-positioned to support adoption of our client’s novel diagnostic. Solutions focused on driving member understanding by drawing on social norms and common language to make the test feel necessary, peer-approved, and familiar. From there, we mapped a frictionless and accessible path to care to take action on the results.

Actionable solutions

To drive adoption of the liquid biopsy, our evidence-based solutions included:

  • Payer adoption playbook with strategy to overcome anticipated member hurdles and drive test usage.

  • Member facing communications, including spoken and print content to normalize need for the test

  • Escalation nudges, including framing and processes to compel members with abnormal screening results to take action

Accelerating physician adoption and intervention

The challenge

Our client developed a breakthrough diagnostic to assess a patient’s risk for rapid kidney failure. The diagnostic radically improves patient outcomes through early intervention, averting kidney failure and the associated need for regular dialysis or transplant. However, providers were often preoccupied with managing patient’s comorbid conditions (diabetes, hypertension, etc.) and ignoring early-stage kidney issues. Our client needed to compel providers to adopt the novel diagnostic and take action on the results.

Our approach

Behavioral strategy

To overcome provider inertia of doing nothing for early-stage kidney disease, our behavioral strategy made diagnosis and intervention the norm. We strategically framed the value of the diagnostic to compel providers to care about a largely invisible and neglected condition. We then established operational pathways to nudge physicians in everyday practice, without removing physician autonomy. Finally, we clarified the care pathway and established reinforcement cues to make it easy to act on the results.

Actionable solutions

To drive diagnostic adoption and earlier intervention, our evidence-based solutions included:

  • Physician educational resources, with anticipated regret framing to make the value of inaction undesirable

  • Strategic operational defaults, to remove the burden to remember to order the test in everyday practice

  • Report design, to enhance understanding and physician confidence in acting on an endorsed upstream care pathway

  • Ordering reinforcement cues, to provide positive feedback on taking action and nudge late adopters