In case your time is short:
- Primary prescribers are just the tip of the iceberg. True adoption depends on engaging the broader network of secondary specialists and influencers who shape care decisions.
- Adoption isn’t linear anymore. Specialists like endocrinologists, nephrologists and pulmonologists often influence treatment pathways even when they don’t write the first script.
- Early adopters move the market. Curious, confident specialists who experiment first and share results create the peer validation loops others need before acting.
- Relevance drives engagement. Messaging must reflect each specialist’s clinical priorities, operational realities and role in the care continuum—not generic product claims.
- Peer-to-peer learning beats promotion. Live panels, recorded discussions and case-based learning generate authentic exchange and accelerate confidence in adoption.
- Sustained multi-touch engagement is critical. One-off events don’t stick. Ongoing flexible touchpoints keep specialists involved and invested over time.
- Technology makes scale possible. Platforms like ExtendMed’s Health Expert Connect™ enable virtual advisory boards, asynchronous education and analytics that prove impact.
If you're only talking to primary prescribers, you're often missing half or more of the actual treatment adoption opportunity. Too many pharma companies focus only on the obvious targets, the physicians writing scripts on day one, but that’s just the visible tip of the iceberg.
In today’s environment, treatment adoption is anything but linear. Beneath the surface lies a vast network of specialists and influencer groups whose engagement often determines whether a therapy truly takes hold, but way too often go ignored.
The endocrinologist managing Graves' disease might never think about thyroid eye disease. The nephrologist seeing gout patients with renal complications? They're deferring to rheumatology, even when they shouldn't.
These specialists influence care decisions every day. They just don't know your therapy is relevant to them yet.
By tapping into this expanded network of influence, you not only differentiate your product but also deliver better outcomes for patients who might otherwise fall through the cracks.
This playbook shows you how to do just that. We've helped dozens of medical affairs teams expand beyond their comfort zones to engage the specialists everyone else ignores. Not through mass marketing or generic outreach, but through targeted, sustained engagement that actually works.
What we'll cover:
- Why traditional stakeholder segmentation fails these days
- How to activate peer influence at scale
- Which educational formats actually drive behavior change
- The technology requirements for sustainable engagement
ExtendMed helps life sciences companies scale treatment adoption by facilitating smarter, more sustained engagement with the right stakeholders—using virtual touchpoints, asynchronous learning and customized advisory experiences.
Get in touch for a free personalized demo to see how it works.
The challenge of expanding treatment adoption
One of the biggest hurdles in achieving broad treatment adoption is reaching specialists who fall outside the core prescribing group.
While primary prescribers may be familiar with a new therapy’s clinical rationale and positioned to give prescriptions, the secondary circle (those who influence care but may not usually prescribe for the given disease) can be harder to engage.
These secondary stakeholders often include specialists and others whose patients may benefit from a treatment but who don’t see themselves as central to prescribing it. Hesitation can slow the adoption curve, especially when roles are limited or contested.
We find that despite being super valuable wells of insight, secondary specialists are hard to engage for three core reasons:
- Competing clinical priorities — Their time and attention is maxed out in their own therapeutic area. Your adjacent indication? Not urgent without compelling context.
- No “peer precedent” — Early in launch, few colleagues advocate within their field. Without peer validation, they wait. (And wait.)
- Role ambiguity — In complex diseases, nobody's clear who owns what. So everyone defers.
Key stakeholder segments for expansion
Expanding treatment adoption begins with identifying who (beyond the primary prescriber) influences when, how and whether a treatment is initiated or otherwise plays a meaningful role in a patient’s therapeutic journey.
To kick this off, start by mapping who actually touches your patients.
For example:
- Endocrinologists in thyroid eye disease — They manage the underlying Graves' but often defer to others for the ocular complications.
- Nephrologists in uncontrolled gout — They see the renal complications but assume rheumatology owns treatment.
- Pulmonologists in systemic inflammatory diseases — Pulmonologists may play a vital role in diagnosing or co-managing organ-specific complications in conditions like sarcoidosis or systemic sclerosis, but rarely initiate therapy.
Three types of influence
As you go through this exercise, it’s important to distinguish between three main types of stakeholders who serve as influencers and label them as such:
Here’s the closeout framework we typically run in our playbook:
- Prescribers: Those with authority to initiate treatment. When trying to expand your stakeholder base, these may be “secondary prescribers” who are not the most common initiators but have the capacity to do so under specific circumstances.
- Influencers: HCPs who shape treatment decisions indirectly. These include specialists who patients see early in their diagnostic journey, or who contribute insights to the prescribing provider.
- Care collaborators: Clinicians who co-manage patients through shared care models (e.g., coordinating monitoring, lab work or counseling) but who don’t initiate treatment themselves.
Understanding where each stakeholder fits allows engagement teams to develop more precise messaging and resource allocation strategies. Identify your secondary stakeholders and label them correctly according to these influencer types. (You may want to get even more granular!)
Mapping your influence networks
To design an effective engagement with these groups you’ve just identified, you now have to map the influence networks within each therapeutic area.
This includes identifying:
- Which specialists see your patients.
- Who refers to whom (e.g., PCP → Rheumatologist → Nephrologist).
- Where decisions actually happen in the diagnostic or treatment pathway.
- Who informal leaders or peer influencers are within those groups.
Virtual engagement gives you this data. Teams who partner with us to use our Health Expert Connect™ platform to run a stakeholder expansion program track who participates, what they download and how sentiment shifts. That's how you find real influence—not titles. Talk to us to see how we leverage a purpose-built engagement platform to operationalize this process.
A few strategies for driving adoption beyond primary prescribers
Successful stakeholder expansion can’t be one-time exposure or static messaging. It needs to be sustained, organic engagement that aligns with specialists’ goals and how they actually work and make decisions.
We’ve worked extensively with life sciences teams to build scalable stakeholder engagement strategies that deliver results.
Our strategies leverage a mix of technology, advisory touchpoints, peer dynamics and tailored content to bring non-primary prescribers into the treatment conversation in a way that’s relevant, respectful and (arguably most importantly) repeatable.
Let’s dive into how this works in practice by pulling some strategies right out of our own playbook.
1. Identify and cultivate early adopter specialists
The Diffusion of Innovations model applies perfectly here. If you’re not familiar, it describes the way new ideas are spread and adopted by society by grouping individuals into one of several groups:
- “Innovators”
- “Early adopters”
- “Laggards”
In the middle are the “early” and “late majority” who represent the mainstream.
The connection here is that you need innovators and early adopters to validate before the mainstream moves.
To identify HCPs who could become your innovators and early adopters, look for those who are curious, confident and open to new solutions. They may not need extensive prompting to explore a new therapy—but they do need a platform to amplify their voice and a role that acknowledges their leadership.
For example, think of an early-adopter nephrologist who treats a handful of uncontrolled gout patients with kidney complications. They’re curious enough to pilot a new therapy, confident enough to share real-world results with peers and engaged enough to bring those cases to a virtual panel. Once their colleagues hear how they managed infusion logistics or addressed comorbidities, that practical validation gives hesitant peers the confidence to follow.
Look for specialists who:
- Show up at congresses.
- Contribute to clinical discussions.
- Have trial experience.
- Use digital tools comfortably.
- Care about care gaps—even outside their lane.
These are your champions. In our experience, identifying these individuals early—especially those who are already interfacing with patient populations affected by the new treatment—can dramatically shift perceptions among their peers.
They'll say what others are thinking.
“They’re the ones who can say, ‘Here’s how I’m using this in practice, here’s why it works and here’s what to watch for.’ That kind of peer-driven insight is what other specialists are waiting for before they take action.”
— Amy Ravi, CEO, ExtendMed
How to actually recruit them into advisory or educational roles
Once identified, the goal is to recruit these early adopters into high-visibility roles within your engagement strategy. ExtendMed’s platform supports this by making it easy to facilitate:
- Virtual advisory boards where early adopters can guide discussion topics.
- Speaker programs that let them present real-world experience.
- Co-creation of educational content, such as expert commentary or FAQs.
The key here is to give them structured but flexible opportunities—especially in asynchronous (non-live) formats. This promotes participation without overburdening already busy specialists.
Here are a few examples to illustrate what this can actually look like in practice:
- Virtual advisory boards where early adopters can guide discussion topics: You might invite a nephrologist who just piloted a new therapy in a small clinic to present their patient selection criteria or share how they solved infusion logistics. Peers immediately see practical pathways they can adapt.
- Speaker programs that let them present real-world experience: Feature an endocrinologist at a multi-specialty panel who explains how they flag thyroid eye disease early and coordinate with ophthalmology—turning a perceived “adjacent issue” into part of their clinical responsibility.
- Co-creation of educational content, such as expert commentary or FAQs: Ask early adopters to draft “top five questions I hear from peers” or record short video clips responding to common hesitations. These snippets can then be archived in a content hub for asynchronous learning.
- Asynchronous peer exchanges: Host a case-based discussion thread where early adopters post patient scenarios and their management approach. Others can add commentary when convenient, building a living library of specialty-specific insights.
Once you have these stakeholders recruited, it’s important to amplify their influence. Early adopter impact grows when their insights are shared across peer networks and internal teams.
A few of our strategies here:
- Record and distribute excerpts from virtual panels.
- Highlight comments or trends from advisory discussions.
- Use ExtendMed’s engagement analytics to track which content resonates most and with whom.
The goal here should be creating momentum, not isolated wins that fizzle.
2. Tailor your messaging to specialist motivations
Effective engagement here hinges on relevance. When communicating with specialists outside the primary prescribing group, generic messaging almost always fails. Each specialist needs to know why this matters to their practice.
Our experience supporting stakeholder expansion projects reveals a consistent theme here to motivate these groups to participate:
- Speak their clinical language. Endocrinologists care about thyroid function and autoimmune dynamics, not just eye symptoms. Lead with what matters to them.
- Address operational reality: If they can't infuse, show them the pathway: referral networks, infusion centers, care coordination. Make it achievable.
- Use role-specific patient stories: Show a specialist like them contributing to outcomes. Highlight their unique value in the care team. Make them the hero of the story.
- Clarify collaborative models: Many people hesitate because roles are unclear. Show how they fit without overstepping."As a nephrologist, you're first to see gout complications. Here's how your insights guide care planning with rheumatology."
Meet them where they are. Speak to their goals. Affirm their value.
Our own Amy Ravi articulates this perfectly:
“Specialists outside the primary prescribing role often ask, ‘How does this really help me deliver better care within my specialty?’ That’s the message you need to answer. It’s not enough to highlight ophthalmologic benefits in thyroid eye disease—you have to speak to what endocrinologists care about: thyroid function, autoimmune dynamics, long-term systemic outcomes.
When you position a therapy in terms of their clinical goals and show operational pathways that make it achievable in their practice—whether that means referral to an infusion center or collaborating with the broader care team—you move the conversation from theoretical to practical.
Patient stories become especially powerful when they reflect the reality of that specialist’s daily challenges and show how their role contributed to a positive outcome. Maybe most important is clarifying how they fit into the larger care model.
Many non-prescribers hesitate because they don’t want to overstep. But when you frame their role as essential input that guides better long-term care, you affirm their value and invite them into the process. At the end of the day, engagement comes not from giving specialists more information, but from aligning with their goals and affirming their role in the care continuum. That’s when awareness becomes adoption.”
— Amy Ravi, CEO, ExtendMed
3. Enable genuine peer-to-peer learning
Peers trump promotion every time. When colleagues share practical insights, others listen. Our Health Expert Connect™ platform is specifically designed to facilitate these types of organic, high-value exchanges—both synchronously and asynchronously—allowing team to scale credible, peer-driven education that accelerates adoption.
Here are just a few examples:
- Live virtual panels: This is where you can mix specialties. Let them hear how peers think and act. A panel with rheum, neph and PCP discussing gout co-management? That's when lightbulbs go off.
- Recorded discussions: Not everyone can attend live—so, archive everything! We can tag it, transcribe it and track what gets watched.
- Case-based learning: Real scenarios capture attention and provide an incredible forum for interdisciplinary perspectives. We let specialists see themselves in the cases and contribute their view.
This isn't just education—it's validation. It shifts the narrative from "Why should I?" to "How are others doing this?"
“What truly drives engagement isn’t just more information. It’s creating the right environments for specialists to learn from one another. With ExtendMed’s Health Expert Connect platform, we make that possible at scale.
Live, moderated panels bring together colleagues across specialties to openly discuss how they co-manage conditions like gout. Those conversations create peer validation loops that no slide deck can replicate. And because time is limited, we extend the value asynchronously: every discussion can be tagged, transcribed, analyzed and shared through content hubs so specialists can explore at their own pace.
Even case-based learning modules become living, collaborative experiences when peers can walk through scenarios, see how others solved challenges and add their own perspectives.”
— Amy Ravi, CEO, ExtendMed
4. Deliver asynchronous, on-demand learning
Specialists are busy. Most can't do noon webinars. They need flexibility. That’s why asynchronous and on-demand learning is critical for driving adoption at scale.
Our platform was designed with this reality in mind, offering life sciences teams a robust suite of tools to deliver self-paced, flexible education that meets specialists where they are—without compromising on depth or interactivity.
Central to this approach is our use of content hubs: custom-branded repositories where HCPs can access educational assets at their convenience.
These hubs can include:
- Video recordings of past advisory boards or expert panels.
- Annotated slide decks tailored to specialist audiences.
- Clinical trial summaries or peer-reviewed literature.
- FAQ documents addressing common objections or operational concerns.
- Downloadable protocols or treatment algorithms.
These resources are essential in keeping the conversation going after an event ends. Specialists want to review content on their own time. Having a well-organized, role-specific hub shows them you respect their time and are invested in their learning process.
Our platform allows teams to track downloads, views and engagement at the individual user level, providing visibility into what materials are resonating and where more support may be needed.
Beyond static content, we also make it interactive:
- Discussion boards where HCPs can respond to clinical prompts or post questions to peers and moderators.
- Surveys to collect feedback, test knowledge or segment users by interest area.
- Presentation builders that let speakers or KOLs customize slide decks for their own sessions.
We urge teams to track everything—downloads, time spent, return visits. This tells you what works. Self-paced doesn't mean passive. It means giving specialists control over their learning journey.
5. Sustain engagement through multiple touchpoints
One event changes little. Sustained engagement can change everything. Our platform enables exactly this by supporting an ongoing cadence of virtual touchpoints that keep specialists informed, involved and inspired to act over time.
These touchpoints aren’t simply repeat events—they are coordinated, insight-driven interactions that build trust and reinforce relevance at each stage of the engagement journey.
“Engagement can’t be a one-and-done. These stakeholders need to be brought into the process gradually—with opportunities to provide input, hear from peers and see the impact of their participation.”
— Amy Ravi, CEO, ExtendMed
By scheduling shorter, focused virtual sessions—spaced over weeks or months—pharma teams can:
- Incorporate feedback into future sessions.
- Reconnect as new data emerges.
- Show how their input shapes strategy.
This sense of continuity helps position the specialist not just as a participant, but as a valued partner in the adoption process.
One of the most compelling features of ExtendMed’s approach is its ability to offer high-value engagement without overburdening specialists. Through tools like asynchronous discussion boards, surveys and segmented content hubs, HCPs can interact on their own terms—while still contributing meaningfully to the conversation.
ExtendMed also integrates scheduling tools, secure communications and role-based access features, making it easy to personalize touchpoints while managing logistical complexity behind the scenes. The platform’s analytics help teams optimize timing, format and frequency. Each engagement builds on the last rather than repeating it.
For example, a specialist might:
- Join an initial virtual advisory board.
- Follow up with an asynchronous survey or comment thread.
- Review a personalized summary report or video clip.
- Participate in a targeted case discussion weeks later.
Each interaction builds on each other. Specialists become partners, not participants.
Platform and technology considerations
Traditional tactics—lunch-and-learns, rep visits, congress booths—can't scale this kind of engagement. The timing is usually off, communication is basically one-way and it’s basically impossible to gather data on them.
Today’s engagement efforts must reflect the reality of decentralized care and overburdened providers. It’s not just about getting on their calendar. It’s about meeting them where they are, with tools that make engagement easy and valuable.
A modern engagement solution must provide a seamless user experience for both field teams and HCPs. while delivering robust tracking and reporting for internal stakeholders. They should have features like:
- Scheduling flexibility: Built-in calendar tools and smart invitations so specialists can participate at times that fit their schedules. Whether through asynchronous formats or short, focused virtual meetings, flexibility is key to increasing participation rates.
- Secure, role-based access: Engagement often involves different roles—prescribers, collaborators, moderators and internal reviewers. That necessitates secure, role-based permissions to ensure users only access content relevant to their needs while maintaining compliance and confidentiality.
- Collaborative tools: Features like discussion boards, document co-editing and real-time chat enable specialists to share insights, comment on resources and contribute meaningfully to shared goals. These tools are especially useful when specialists are distributed across geographies or therapeutic focus areas.
- Engagement analytics and tracking: ExtendMed’s platform provides real-time visibility into user behavior, including which specialists attended, what materials they accessed, how they rated sessions and how sentiment shifted over time. These insights allow teams to refine strategies, prioritize outreach and demonstrate impact to internal stakeholders.
Our Health Expert Connect™ platform empowers life sciences organizations to design, deliver and optimize engagement across the stakeholder spectrum. Whether you're educating nephrologists about their role in gout management or bringing endocrinologists into a thyroid eye disease conversation, the platform provides:
- A centralized hub for virtual and asynchronous engagement.
- Integrated compliance tracking and Sunshine reporting.
- Custom workflows to manage speaker programs and advisory boards.
- Tools to summarize and synthesize feedback across sessions.
Talk to us when you’re ready to turn fragmented outreach into actual strategic engagement.
Case studies of stakeholder expansion in action
The theory behind stakeholder expansion is compelling—but what does it look like in practice? ExtendMed’s work with life sciences teams illustrates how targeted engagement strategies can successfully bring non-primary prescribers into the treatment conversation and influence adoption patterns across therapeutic areas.
Here are two anonymized, real-world examples that demonstrate the impact of thoughtful stakeholder segmentation, peer-led education and sustained engagement.
Case 1: expanding from ophthalmologists to endocrinologists in thyroid eye disease
Challenge: A biopharma company launched a treatment for thyroid eye disease (TED) and saw strong uptake among ophthalmologists. However, endocrinologists—who often manage the underlying autoimmune condition (e.g., Graves’ disease)—remained disengaged. Many didn’t see TED as their clinical responsibility, asking, “Is this really my patient?”
Strategy: ExtendMed worked with the company’s medical affairs team to develop a series of virtual advisory boards and asynchronous content hubs specifically tailored for endocrinologists.
The engagement strategy included:
- Identifying early adopter endocrinologists with an interest in ophthalmic comorbidities.
- Facilitating multi-specialty panels with both ophthalmologists and endocrinologists to clarify care pathways.
- Sharing patient cases that emphasized early recognition and cross-specialty coordination.
- Offering on-demand access to expert commentary and a curated FAQ addressing common hesitation points.
Results: Endocrinologist engagement increased significantly, with many beginning to refer TED patients earlier and more consistently. Specialists reported greater confidence in recognizing TED and understanding their role in care coordination. Feedback data showed high satisfaction with content relevance and ease of access.
Case 2: bringing nephrologists into gout co-management
Challenge: In managing uncontrolled gout, a company’s rheumatology-focused outreach was insufficient to address patients with renal complications—a population growing in size and complexity. Nephrologists were critical collaborators but were not being engaged in the treatment conversation.
Strategy: The ExtendMed team collaborated with commercial stakeholders to create a multi-touch engagement plan targeting nephrologists. This included:
- Developing a targeted content hub with educational modules on gout’s renal impact.
- Hosting virtual panels with both rheumatologists and nephrologists discussing co-management strategies.
- Creating asynchronous case discussions centered on comorbid patient profiles.
- Leveraging ExtendMed’s analytics to monitor participation and sentiment shifts.
Results: Over the course of six months, the company expanded its specialist reach, increased cross-disciplinary awareness and captured measurable growth in nephrologist participation. Advisory feedback indicated a marked improvement in willingness to coordinate care and contribute to treatment decisions for gout patients with kidney disease.
How to measure success in stakeholder expansion
Successful stakeholder expansion isn’t just about launching engagement—it’s about knowing whether it’s working. For medical affairs and commercial teams, measuring the impact of outreach to non-primary prescribers requires both quantitative and qualitative indicators. The goal is to assess not only who you reached, but how effectively you influenced awareness, confidence and behavior within the specialist community.
Quantitative KPIs
These data points provide clear signals of reach and behavior change:
- Number of specialists reached: Attendance across all virtual and asynchronous touchpoints, including advisory boards, panels, surveys and content hubs. This helps quantify how far your message is traveling within secondary stakeholder groups.
- Engagement duration: Measuring how long specialists spend interacting with learning materials or participating in discussions helps assess relevance and value. For example, specialists who spend time reviewing an on-demand training module or contributing to a case discussion are likely more invested than passive viewers.
- Learning module completion rates: If your engagement includes e-learning content, progress and completion are critical indicators of educational impact and follow-through.
- Prescribing behavior shifts (if accessible): Companies can integrate internal sales or CRM data with engagement reports to observe correlations between participation and prescribing trends.
Qualitative indicators
Beyond hard metrics, qualitative signals provide insight into attitude shifts and message resonance:
- Feedback on comfort level: Post-engagement surveys or discussion boards can capture changes in how comfortable specialists feel discussing, referring or prescribing a treatment. This is especially important for stakeholders who were previously hesitant or uncertain about their role.
- Use of peer language: One of the more nuanced benefits of virtual and asynchronous platforms is the ability to analyze dialogue for shifts in vocabulary or framing. For instance, specialists who begin using terminology that reflects adoption—such as “we manage these patients by…” instead of “they”—may be moving toward active involvement.
- Participation in follow-ups: Specialists who re-engage after initial outreach—whether by attending another virtual event, downloading new content or responding to post-meeting surveys—signal deeper interest and increasing alignment.
ExtendMed automates much of this data capture through its engagement analytics dashboard. With visibility into what content specialists access, how they participate and when sentiment changes, medical and commercial teams can continuously optimize their strategy and allocate resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.
By defining success in both numbers and narratives and using the right tools to track both, life sciences teams can ensure their stakeholder expansion efforts are not only well-executed—but truly effective.
Signs you’re a fit for Health Expert Connect™
If any of these sound familiar, it’s a signal you need Health Expert Connect™. The platform was built to solve exactly these gaps, helping life sciences teams expand influence, sustain engagement and accelerate adoption.
- You’re only reaching the obvious targets. Primary prescribers hear from you, but secondary specialists and influencers are untouched.
- Your adoption curve stalls. Without early adopters validating and sharing experiences, the mainstream never moves.
- Your messaging falls flat. It’s generic, prescriber-focused, and doesn’t reflect each specialty’s priorities or operational realities.
- You lack peer-to-peer validation. Specialists aren’t hearing from colleagues in their own field, so hesitation lingers.
- Your engagement is one-and-done. You run events, but they don’t build momentum or sustain participation over time.
- Specialists can’t learn on their own terms. You rely on webinars or congresses, but offer little in the way of asynchronous or on-demand learning.
- You’re blind to impact. You can’t easily track who engaged, what content resonated, or how sentiment shifted.
Final thoughts and next steps
The market no longer rewards pharma for talking louder to the same audience. It rewards those who bring overlooked specialists into the fold and empower them with peer-driven confidence. That’s the shift Health Expert Connect™ makes possible.
ExtendMed helps you identify the right stakeholders, activate early adopters, and sustain engagement through peer-to-peer learning that scales. Don’t settle for fragmented outreach. The future of adoption belongs to teams that expand their circle of influence—and we’re ready to help you lead it.
ExtendMed helps you:
- Identify and activate first-mover specialists.
- Deliver role-specific messaging and education.
- Enable peer-to-peer learning across live and on-demand channels.
- Sustain engagement through continuous virtual touchpoints.
- Track impact with actionable analytics.
Take the next step with ExtendMed.
ExtendMed’s Health Expert Connect™ platform supports every one of these checklist items above—from segment-specific content delivery to peer-to-peer influence building and analytics-powered optimization. Are you ready to scale treatment adoption through smarter stakeholder engagement?
Request a Demo and see how Health Expert Connect™ can power your expansion strategy.
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