Medical Info On-Demand

Merck, Sharp & Dohme / London, UK  Merck

In 1982 pharmaceutical giant Merck, Sharp & Dohme explored the possibility of providing information about drugs via simple interactive terminals that would provide immediate information access at the doctor’s desk and in the waiting room.

Challenges

International consulting agency Communications Studies and Planning, Ltd flew me to London, UK, to model a medical support service that could provide physicians and their patients with pharmaceutical and therapeutic information. We needed to design a structure that could service each of the three target audiences: Physicians, Patients & Public and Merck representatives.

merck_product

The idea was to place terminals in physician waiting rooms and on the doctor’s desktop.

This would allow the public to have access to self-help information and at the same time would build a stronger direct marketing relationship with the medical community.

The primary design challenge was in content management and information architecture:  How to design a static site which still allowed multiple audiences (with very different agendas) to find relevant information in language and presentation which was of value.

Solutions

The site I designed gave physicians direct access to Merck representatives for product support and other office & professional services. It included:

  • Bulletin Board
  • E-mail
  • Generic Medical Information Retrieval
  • Cross-Referenced Pharmeceutical Directory
  • Product Information Catalog
  • Clinical Trial info
  • Sales Support
  • Online Help and Tutorials
  • Mailbox, bulletin board, Inquiry/Response module

The public had access to a subset of that information, focusing primarily on self-service and education.

It was intended that Merck representatives had access to a superset of the services, with an eye towards sales & presentation support.

These were very early days, with few modeling or screen capture tools.  I created a functioning desktop site model, but these simple sketch diagrams of site structure are all that remain.

Deliverables, Tasks, Techniques

 

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