NeuroXcel and UCB Forge Strategic Partnership to Bridge Medication Information Gaps in Grassroots Healthcare Through Digital Promotion

Epilepsy is an ancient disease, with records dating back to the *Huangdi Neijing* (The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon). Currently, there are over 9 million epilepsy patients in China. With existing treatment methods, 90% of epilepsy cases are treatable. In terms of therapeutic approaches, 60%-70% of patients can achieve seizure control through medication.

As a neurological disorder, not every patient has access to standard treatment protocols. Due to resource constraints, many physicians in primary healthcare institutions continue to rely on therapeutic regimens from over two decades ago, which are insufficient to meet patients’ needs for effective disease control.

In addition to epilepsy, a wide range of medications for neurological disorders remain underutilized in primary care settings. With the rapid advancements in neuroscience, current diagnostic and therapeutic techniques are far superior to those of the past.Primary care has become a value depression for drug accessibility.。

Digital pharmaceutical marketing is empowering both pharmaceutical companies and primary care physicians. In the field of medications for neurological disorders, on December 4, 2020, at the “Global Pharmaceutical & Medical Device Supply Chain Innovation Summit 2020,” UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company, and Naxions Co., Ltd., a leading Chinese enterprise in digital pharmaceutical promotion, announced the launch of a strategic partnership to improve the diagnosis and treatment experience for primary care patients through digital solutions.

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that the collaborative project between UCB and Naxions Co., Ltd. will benefit approximately 20,000 physicians in China’s healthcare market, including 17,000 neurologists and 3,000 pediatricians, thereby reaching around 1.6 million patients across broader regions and contributing to the development of primary healthcare services.

As a global leader in neurological and immunological therapies, what capabilities does UCB see in Naxions Co., Ltd. within the realm of digital pharmaceutical marketing? How does digital marketing unlock value in the pharmaceutical sector—a service landscape characterized by heavy reliance on offline interactions and diverse needs? VCBeat conducted an exclusive interview with Ruan Wei, CEO of Naxions Co., Ltd.

Looking back at the development history of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, even before 2014, pharmaceutical companies had already recognized that traditional marketing approaches, primarily reliant on medical representatives, struggled to penetrate grassroots medication markets. Furthermore, as society entered the digital era, internet-based digital technologies reshaped business models across multiple sectors with greater efficiency and novel interaction paradigms. Digital marketing in the pharmaceutical sector has continued to gain momentum.

As a pioneer in the digital marketing sector of the pharmaceutical industry, Naxions Co., Ltd. was established in 2014. Ruan Wei previously served for an extended period as Key Account Director at British Telecom, where he oversaw informatization initiatives in the pharmaceutical, energy, and high-tech industries. This experience enabled him to recognize that the pharmaceutical vertical remained relatively traditional, presenting substantial opportunities for improvement.

“At the time, I assessed that the pharmaceutical industry was relatively closed-off, yet offered substantial room for improvement. However, the timing of policy introductions and the specific pathways through which changes would be implemented remained quite unclear.” Faced with the opportunity for digital transformation in pharmaceutical enterprises, he believed it was better to embrace the challenge than to miss out. “Although I could not clearly see the specific path forward at that time, I believed others faced the same uncertainty. By entering the market early, we could position ourselves with greater patience to await the opening up of this sector.”

During the same period, a variety of digital marketing solutions emerged in the pharmaceutical industry. Most of these digital marketing strategies are physician-centric, emphasizing the aggregation and accumulation of physician resources in digital marketing efforts.

Naxions Co.,Ltd.'s profound technical heritage and deep insights into the needs of pharmaceutical companies enable it to establish solutions,Rather than starting from the physician’s perspective, we have always focused on meeting the needs of pharmaceutical companies, delivering targeted services to physicians with a core emphasis on serving pharmaceutical enterprises.

Strategically, Naxions Co.,Ltd. adopts a technology- and product-driven approach in pharmaceutical digital marketing, leveraging technological means to enhance industry efficiency and establish a high-efficiency, low-cost, transparent, and compliant marketing model driven by technology and products.

From an implementation perspective, Naxions Co.,Ltd. leverages advanced semantic understanding and deep learning methods to address practical challenges faced by physicians, thereby optimizing the experience for both doctors and patients. By providing high-quality information resources and services to medical professionals at all levels, it helps clinicians access professional information and utilize specialized tools more efficiently and conveniently, ultimately enhancing the quality of diagnosis and treatment.

From specific cases, the promotion of neurological drugs in collaboration with UCB can reflect Naxions Co., Ltd.'s company DNA driven by technology and products.

As population aging intensifies, the incidence of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise. In the global pharmaceutical market, neurological medications have consistently constituted a significant segment. In China, their share in pharmaceutical end-use and clinical practice is also gradually increasing, with the neurological drug market being regarded as the next oncology drug market.

However, in China’s primary healthcare market, facilities are widely distributed yet individually small in scale. Most primary care physicians lack opportunities for training and academic exchange, resulting in outdated disease treatment protocols. Consequently, it is difficult to efficiently disseminate continuously advancing technologies to the grassroots level.

Currently, grassroots hospitals in China’s townships and rural areas are facing the dual challenges of “limited channels for physicians to access medical scientific and technological information” and “low patient satisfaction with clinical care.” Compared with regional central hospitals in major cities, where high-quality medical resources are concentrated, outstanding physicians at primary healthcare institutions struggle to find platforms for academic exchange and discussion due to relatively scarce resources, making it even more difficult for them to obtain timely information aligned with modern medical advancements.

Naxions Co., Ltd. leverages digital solutions to establish an efficient two-way communication mechanism between pharmaceutical companies and physicians, enabling precise alignment of mutual value, rapidly addressing the diverse needs of primary care physicians, and helping them enhance their diagnostic and treatment capabilities.

The grassroots market is vast but characterized by low per-capita output, leading to an asymmetry between input and return when traditional marketing models are adopted. In contrast, internet-based and digital solutions—innately featuring openness, sharing, and zero marginal cost—can maximize value realization in the grassroots market.

Ruan Wei cited an example: “In 2018, UCB launched Neupro (rotigotine transdermal patch), an innovative medication for Parkinson’s disease, in the Chinese market. This product utilizes a unique transdermal patch formulation that allows for once-daily administration and provides continuous therapeutic effects over 24 hours, offering patients with Parkinson’s disease a new and convenient treatment option. Through collaboration, we can establish strong, high-engagement relationships with primary care physicians in the highly promising field of neurological medications, disseminate academic information on this novel therapeutic solution, and thereby benefit patients across the extensive primary care market.”

As the growth of the pharmaceutical market shifts toward the vast primary healthcare sector, profit margins for drugs are being squeezed under intense regulatory pressure, prompting an increasing number of pharmaceutical companies to prioritize digital marketing. The development trajectory of the pharmaceutical digital marketing industry has become increasingly clear, and its subsequent evolution has validated the forward-looking nature of Naxions’ strategy to be driven by technology and products.

At present, the industry generally considers four aspects—professional medical content, precise engagement pathways, compliant operational methods, and efficacy verification—as the core considerations for pharmaceutical digital marketing enterprises.

Ruan Wei stated, “Among these four aspects, the drug itself already has a substantial body of professional content prior to marketing and promotion. Compliant operational strategies must be built upon specialized medical content and precise engagement pathways. Therefore, technology-driven precise engagement pathways are the most challenging to establish, yet they constitute an exclusive resource.”

“In fact, this is similar to the mechanism of social media platforms. Whether it is Douyin or Weibo, the efficiency of information feed distribution must continue to improve. The key underlying mechanism lies in making the delivery pipeline itself increasingly responsive and intelligent.”

Specifically, the core challenge in the scenario of digital pharmaceutical marketing lies in moving beyond one-way, aimless content pushes when distributing professional materials—such as expert guidelines, guideline interpretations, and case analyses—to physicians. Instead, the goal is to deeply integrate into physicians’ workflow scenarios, ensuring that content distribution addresses real-world clinical challenges and fosters sustained interaction.

Naxions Co., Ltd.’s pharmaceutical digital marketing solution creates value by closely aligning with physicians’ career stages, current patient bases, and future aspirations, delivering tailored information matching from a higher-dimensional perspective and with a long-term vision.

In the grassroots market, a core segment of digital pharmaceutical marketing, Naxions Co., Ltd. has served over 300,000 primary care physicians and connected with more than 10,000 medical institutions. Based on an estimate of each physician serving 10–20 patients, Naxions approximately serves 3–6 million patients, covering more than 70 drug SKUs.

Looking ahead, the pharmaceutical digitalization industry still holds significant room for growth and potential. For Naxions Co., Ltd., more challenges and opportunities await in the future.

First, from the supply side, the digital marketing industry in the pharmaceutical sector has developed earlier abroad, with pharmaceutical companies adopting a more proactive attitude towards digital marketing. Many companies have established separate digital marketing departments. Although local pharmaceutical companies lag behind international ones in their digital marketing efforts, domestic pharmaceutical companies are gradually beginning to make strategic moves. In recent years, Naxions Co., Ltd. has also started collaborating with local pharmaceutical companies.

Second, the structure of drug utilization is undergoing changes. Historically, the pharmaceutical market was dominated by in-hospital sales; however, following the implementation of the “4+7” volume-based procurement policy, terminal prices within hospitals have dropped by more than 50%. Consequently, drugs for condition improvement are gradually shifting toward out-of-hospital channels, primary care settings, and online platforms. The continuous emergence of new scenarios is also providing new growth poles for digital pharmaceutical marketing.