COVID-19 Crisis Response with Dan Fitzgerald of InCrowd

Dan Fitzgerald is CEO of InCrowd, the leader of real-time feedback solutions that allow market insights professionals to obtain physician and other HCP responses. They have become the most trusted market intelligence platform in the healthcare insights industry. During the COVID-19 crisis, they have also been running a weekly tracker of the views and experiences of front-line healthcare workers, providing an invaluable resource to understand what these heroes are dealing with every day. In this interview, Dan and I explore lessons learned as a leader during COVID-19, how he and his company have adapted to deliver vital insights to their customers on perhaps the most important professional population in the world right now, and what comes next in the industry.

I’ve had the privilege of knowing the InCrowd team since they started out. Over the years, I have been consistently impressed with the company they have built and the unique, and important solutions they bring to healthcare research. During the COVID-19 crisis, that admiration has only increased, and you’ll see why in the interview and with some of their data I am sharing here.

First, a bit of history on why this interview (and InCrowd’s data) is important. From InCrowd’s website:

“InCrowd’s founders—Janet Kosloff and Diane Hayes—had an idea in 2010 that healthcare market insights desperately needed one thing: less friction.

Seasoned life science insights professionals, they knew the power busy doctors have to meaningfully influence drug commercialization, and they knew the frustration most market insights professionals have in reaching them quickly.

Over the last nine years, InCrowd has developed powerful technology, built an experienced team, and cultivated a responsive Crowd of HCPs that allow market insights professionals to obtain physician and other HCP responses in real-time—and that solution has become the most trusted market intelligence platform in the industry.”

I’ve known Dan for most of my career in market research as well, although this was the first time we had sat down and chatted like this. Here are his bona fides from his bio:

“Daniel S. Fitzgerald is chief executive officer and president of InCrowd, a SARORAS company, and the pioneer of real-time market insights in the life sciences space. With over 25 years of successful commercial and general management experience, Dan’s focus is data-driven insights and analytical, tech-enabled businesses, having served many diverse vertical markets and customers.

Before investing in InCrowd, Dan was a managing partner at Reimagine Holdings—an investment portfolio firm that acquired, operated, and developed tech-enabled companies that help customers efficiently create and transform data into business intelligence to enable faster and more informed business decisions—where he supported the acquisition and growth strategy and served as board chairman for two of the portfolio companies: MarketSight (a SaaS data management and visualization platform), and iGain LLC (loyalty and reward communities for sourcing data and insights). In February 2019, Reimagine and its portfolio was purchased by Dynata, a leading global data services provider.

Prior to Reimagine, Dan held global senior leadership and commercial roles at Lightspeed Research and Global Market Insite, Inc. (GMI), part of the Kantar/WPP family. He was integral to GMI’s business transformation and success, which brought greater value to GMI customers and culminated in Kantar/WPP’s acquisition.”

In other words, Dan is the real deal: an experienced leader with deep roots in market research, and now working with an important company during these troubled times. This interview is well-worth the time.

Resources for COVID-19

• Dan mentioned that they have been conducting their own research among front-line healthcare professionals; you can find all the recent releases here
• They also hosted a webinar recently summarizing all of their COVID-19 research (their trackers as well as non-frontline treating physician, high-need patient, and nurse research). You can check that out here
• Last but not least, here are the results of their most recent tracker released last week; it has some good news so we are sharing the highlights as well as the link

Key Findings on Physicians Perceptions During COVID-19

InCrowd’s research covers physician perceptions starting in January 2020, when the company first began investigating COVID-19’s impact on frontline treating physicians. Key findings from Wave 4 show that:

• Access to testing has jumped significantly since last month, now 82%, from 67% in March.
• Perceptions of preparedness have more than doubled this month, with 59% in April believing that their facilities are adequately prepared to treat COVID-19 patients—up from 24% in March.
• When asked about their facilities’ preparedness for a second outbreak later in the year, only 28% agreed strongly with this statement, while the majority (55%) expressed some level of confidence regarding preparedness for a second outbreak.
• On average, frontline healthcare respondents don’t expect things to return to normal for another six-plus months—around mid-October.
• Positive perceptions of the precautionary measures taken by local governments jumped significantly—up to 50%, from 21% in March.
• Physician concerns for their personal safety and that of loved ones remained high but stabilized—with personal safety concerns at 70% in March and 66% in April and safety of loved ones at 78% in both months.
• Forty-five percent of frontline treating physicians surveyed in April indicate fearing for the loss of their jobs. Verbatim remarks cite increased responsibilities at work due to resource, funding and staff shortages.
• Twice as many respondents in April, versus March, felt positively about bellwether COVID-19 public initiatives, such as:
  • The effects of public/private synergy—now at 50%, from 21% in March
  • Belief that the US can flatten the curve—up to 30%, from 12% in March, with 50% of respondents now believing the US is more likely than not to flatten the curve
• Percentages of overall patients with confirmed or suspected cases have more than doubled since March, from 8% to 21%.
• Among currently utilized COVID-19 mitigation strategies, those most likely to remain in place post-pandemic are telehealth (77%), exposure-limiting practices within facilities (50%), and phone triaging (48%).