Navinata Health
Optimizing Knowledge Exchange with Busy Physicians

Having served as a consultant at ZS Associates for six years, advising pharmaceutical companies on their physician engagement strategies, Umar Akbar was pained by the challenges in this arena. While increasingly busy physicians found it difficult to stay up to date on the latest medical advances, the imminent challenge affecting pharma was developing effective digital engagement approaches with physicians. Seeking to address these challenges, Akbar sought an innovative solution to optimize knowledge exchange between these groups, and thus saw the inception of Navinata Health, a defining healthcare startup that provides a uniquely designed two way Knowledge Exchange Platform between Pharma and Physicians.

On the one hand, the platform serves as a medium for Pharma brands to deliver tailored educational content plus on-demand expert support and listen directly to physician insights, helping them optimize their product launches and overall engagement with physicians. On the other hand, it optimizes the engagement and overall benefit for physicians through a simple three step process, namely ‘share,' ‘learn,' and ‘connect.' The ‘share' aspect of the platform enables physicians to share their insights on medical advances and request their specific educational needs. The ‘learn’ aspect provides access to tailored and focused educational content in the form of five to fifteen-minute videos on relevant topics. “The short videos on the platform are accompanied by quick summary bullets, enabling busy physicians to get hold of the content without the need to re-watch the videos,” states Akbar, Founder and CEO at Navinata Health. This helps physicians stay well informed of important medical advances amidst their increasingly demanding schedules. The ‘connect’ feature of Navinata’s platform enables physicians to engage in convenient on-demand 1-on-1 discussions with thought leaders in their specific field.

Our approach is to put the physicians front and center before we share any content with them

What makes the Knowledge Exchange Platform especially promising in fulfilling its dual objectives is its ability to ensure the utmost credibility, integrity, and relevance of the exchanged knowledge. Navinata ensures this by first profiling the physicians at the time of sign-up to better understand their learning needs and interests. This insight is then further complemented by performing primary and secondary research to explore the diseases that require education and understand the important questions within a disease that the physicians want answered. Lastly, as physicians become regular recipients of the educational content, they are provided with simple feedback surveys following each interaction to ensure continued delivery of the most relevant content. “Our underlying goal is to put physicians front and center and truly understand their needs and preferences before we share any content with them,” remarks Akbar.

In an instance, Navinata Health helped a remote small town doctor more effectively deal with a hematological malignancy. The Knowledge Exchange Platform educated the doctor on the various new therapies that had recently become available and the side effects involved, enabling him to better tailor his care to individual patient needs. He was further able to connect directly with a renowned thought leader to get his urgent and important questions answered, thus helping him become more comfortable in treating the disease.

Through its unique offering, Navinata Health has indeed come to ensure that the most important entity in the healthcare spectrum, namely the patient, has access to the most effective life-saving therapies. Although Navinata Health is currently focused primarily on educational campaigns within cancer and auto-immune disorders, it looks forward to further expanding its focus to respiratory diseases, neurological disorders, and diabetes, thus fuelled with the noble intentions of enabling knowledge exchange to a broader range of healthcare specializations.