PfizerPro 2.0
Creating a new web interface for physicians to accompany a shift in how Pfizer does business
pfizerpro.com
In 2020, the pandemic forced Pfizer to reconsider their general modus operandi. Before covid, Pfizer relied almost entirely on field reps who visited offices to provide information, materials (like patient and physician pamphlets), and samples. The web portal was primarily a means to either report an adverse event, or to request a rep visit.
Once the pandemic began, it became clear that that approach was not going to work, and the antiquated website would need a major overhaul.
My role: Agile Product Owner
Timeline: Vision to Launch in four markets within three months
Tools: Miro, Jira, Google suite
Outcome: As Agile Product Owner I coordinated the design, research, testing, and implementation of a new user-facing website. I coordinated with other Product Management and Engineering teams as part of a large Agile Release Train in a modified Scaled Agile model.
The Problem
Pfizer has a lot of materials that need to be shared with physicians, but the webpage was not designed for that purpose. It was a diffuse collection of individually created pages—each with a unique purpose and often with a style only loosely tied to a general (but not explicit or enforced) design style.
To complicate matter further, each country has its own separate webpage that was also developed on its own to emulate one of the other markets. This resulted in a telephone game of style and content mutation.
The Solution
A new webpage format designed to provide easy access to materials, engage physicians with new content, and look and feel new.
In order to move quickly, the webpage would first be designed for the four largest markets. And then a template would be created to allow The Rest of the World to follow quickly behind.
And in order to not break things, deliberate collaboration was necessary with other teams like Search, Microservices, and Menus and Navigation.
More than a Lift and Shift
Key Terms
Adverse Event: side effects or a reaction to medication.
Sample: single-dose pack of medication that physicians can give to patients.
Auto-complete: a search feature that uses a set minimum number of characters to query a library of likely terms. For example, if a user enters the letters ‘bes’, auto-complete might suggest “BESPONSA”.
Auto-suggest: some locations allow search functionality to look anywhere in common phrases, which could allow the characters ‘bes’ to suggest “Side effects of BESPONSA” or “Chicago Med Summit Webinar about Success with BESPONSA”. This is prohibited in some locations.
(There is a surprisingly small amount of jargon in this industry—at least as far as web portals are concerned.)
Strategic Imperatives
The platform needs to be configurable and flexible enough to accommodate typical legal necessities with minimal development effort. Local partners consult on legal requirements and limits for their locale.
The end product needs to be easily configured and stood up in new markets within days.
A coherent design system needs to be ready to apply for all of the various sub-pages of the website. Each medication has its own website, and they were not all using the “current” design style. The new style library needs to be available and easy to use for all webpages.
Before and After
Before
There is very little functionality in the old page, and many of the links go to the same places.
Out of the page’s 17 interactive elements there are:
Two sets of Sign In and Register buttons
Two ways to go to the Order Samples page
Five paths to the Download Materials page
Three paths to the Contact page
Two paths to see a list of Products (which are not listed anywhere on this screen)
And one link to an Oncology page
And this is just the page for the United States. Each country had its own unique webpage with contents roughly similar to this, depending on local legal requirements and medication availability.
Screenshot of the old PfizerPro webpage from December 2019 archive.org
After
New avenues for physician engagement are added, like pathways to see clinical trials, register for events (both in person and webinars), and find videos from industry professionals and of past webinars.
There is also a new dropdown navigation for the top-row navigation, a shopping cart to allow users to order multiple samples and physical materials (as opposed to ordering individually from each medication’s group), and a brand new search functionality with auto-complete and auto-correct.
Each of these has its own local legal restrictions. For example, in some countries it is illegal to auto-suggest a medication name or diagnosis. And in some countries it is illegal to allow medication information to be shown to anyone who is not a licensed medical professional.
Screenshot of the current PfizerPro webpage from www.pfizerpro.com
This top-row dropdown was a new feature of PfizerPro 2.0
International Collaboration
Pfizer Colleagues
Pfizer corporate, most of the development team, my manager, and I are located in New York.
The design team is based in Brighton, UK.
The international business coordinator is in Paris, France.
The rest of the Product Owners and a few of the developers are in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Because the team was so spread out and international, it was crucial to communication clearly and maintain open-door office hours during windows where schedules overlapped.
Four Big Markets
The local partners I worked with to ensure local legal and regulatory requirements were met were located in
Washington D.C.
São Paulo, Brazil
Madrid, Spain
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Complex Markets
In addition to the four big markets, I worked closely with coworkers and medical professionals in two markets that are representative of the most complex customers.
Germany provides an extremely large amount of information to physicians in their markets, and they have a massive catalog of unique materials. Additionally, many words in German have significant character length, so each element was designed to accommodate such words, and we provided guidance for suggested character limits.
Japan was a pilot market for using alternate character sets and page layouts in the new site builder. Some of these same lessons helped design for other character sets and text directions.
World map highlighting the locations of Pfizer colleagues in teal, the big four pilot markets in orange, and the two pilot complex markets in magenta.