Lundbeck and Otsuka Medical Alliance: Prevention in Practice

Emerging evidence shows how a new form of treatment – long-acting injectables (LAIs) – are greatly beneficial to patients with schizophrenia, especially when applied in its earlier phases. Yet despite this, the uncertainty around this treatment remains with many healthcare professionals seeing LAIs as a last resort. 

To encourage and educate healthcare professionals to learn more about LAIs and how to communicate its benefits to their patients, a new approach to clinical communications training was needed: one that goes beyond the traditional approach to ensure an engaging and educational experience.

The Challenge

Uncertainty is not unusual when new treatments emerge. Yet the narrative around LAIs remain unclear despite being backed by a wealth of evidence showing its ability to prevent cases of relapse and rehospitalisation.  

In part, healthcare professionals have preconceived notions about a person’s willingness to try LAIs and when to initiate this treatment. With a lack of accessible communications training available, many HCPs also feel it’s a complex topic to broach.

The Solution

Based on these insights, we wanted to break the typical mould of medical education and design an innovative online solution for HCPs to practice using better communication techniques surrounding LAIs, make educational resources more accessible, and give HCPs a confident start.

This was the goal with Prevention in Practice: a warm, empathetic, and unbranded online experience providing educational resources and training for HCPs to help prevent relapse and optimise their practices for early LAI use.  

Through Prevention in Practice, HCPs can learn about the techniques and best practices to interacting with their patients and apply their learnings in a seamless online role-play experience.

The Result

As the website launches for HCPs across the world this year, Prevention in Practice has recently been awarded a silver in the Medical Marketing + Media Awards with judges saying that “the site is beautiful…its role-playing element gives psychiatrists the practice and education to skilfully explain these treatments.” 

This project was executed in cooperation with NoA Health.