As pharmaceutical marketers and media buyers plan their 2026 strategies, they’re increasingly investing in Point of Care (POC) as a core channel – so much so that Point of Care revenue surpassed $1 billion in 2024.
POC has built a reputation as one of the most trusted and high-performing channels for reaching patients and healthcare providers (HCPs) in the moments that matter.
Brands and marketers can reach patients at the POC with numerous different products. These products are typically divided into two main categories – print and digital POC. Print and digital POC comprise communications delivered to patients, caregivers, and/or healthcare providers in settings where healthcare is delivered, such as doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and via telehealth platforms. The goal is to provide educational or supportive content at the moment of care to facilitate health discussions, improve patient outcomes, and empower individuals to manage their health proactively while leveraging high-trust environments.
Print and digital POC can help you ensure your messaging shows up in the moments that matter most: when patients and providers are actively making decisions.
Read on to explore:
- The benefits of print and static POC, formats and best practices for leveraging them
- The benefits of digital POC, formats and best practices for leveraging them
- The measurement best practices you can leverage to track the impact of both your print and digital POC campaigns
Let’s start with print and static POC.
The Benefits of Using Print & Static POC
Before diving into these POC tactics, it’s important to understand the benefits of print and static media in a POC campaign:
- Always on and accessible: messaging is visible around the clock, increasing exposure and reinforcing brand recognition.
- Scale: Print media can be distributed to large numbers of healthcare locations, ensuring wide reach.
- Extended engagement: Patients can take home printed materials like brochures and guides, which reinforce messaging beyond the healthcare setting.
- Targeted and customizable: Marketers can tailor campaigns to reach specific patient or provider audiences.
- Provider alignment: HCPs often value educational printouts they can hand directly to patients.
- Trust: Research shows that patients and HCPs trust print materials. 68% of patients report finding print useful in waiting rooms (vs. 54% for health-related TV), and 78% of HCPs say they value print materials in exam rooms (vs. 59% for video and interactive content).
Print POC Tactics
There are a wide variety of printed and static tactics available. Understanding their unique benefits helps determine which best fits with your campaign. And if you’re interested in going even deeper, our POC Product Finder can help you identify a comprehensive list of print and static tactics and media partners for your POC campaign.
- Posters: Posters feature educational stats, symptom management tips, and QR codes for additional resources. They align with provider conversations and ensure your brand has 100% share of voice.
- Condition Guides: Resembling specialized magazines, condition guides allow brands to educate through storytelling. They provide deep engagement on dedicated topics while patients wait.
- Cover Wraps: Custom-branded magazine covers provide visible, high-impact messaging that accompanies trusted editorial content.
- Take-One Materials: Brochures, coupons, and flyers placed in high-traffic areas (waiting rooms, exam rooms, pharmacies) extend messaging into wherever the patient will travel after the visit with these materials, like the home or workplace.
- Table Tents: Compact and easy to place, table tents reinforce awareness in waiting areas or pharmacies.
- Workbooks: Interactive guides for patients to track symptoms, manage treatment side effects, and prepare questions for providers.
- Wellness Kiosks: Located in pharmacy waiting areas, kiosks dispense sanitizing wipes while delivering branded information and holding brochures.
- Shelf Talkers: Placed directly on retail pharmacy shelves, these highlight specific products or services to shoppers at the point of purchase.
Best Practices for Leveraging Print & Static POC
Once you’ve selected your campaign tactics, keep in mind these best practices when activating print media at the POC:
- Use print & static POC to expand reach and frequency: Extend the impact of your campaign where digital screens may not be present.
- Be sure to understand the distribution and placement of your printed POC media: The distribution and placement of print and static media tactics depend on the form the tactic takes. Some tactics are permanently placed in an office, while others are shipped to a POC location and placed at the discretion of healthcare providers (HCPs) and office staff. Notably, HCPs are receptive to educational materials that can be given to patients even when these materials are not permanently placed.
The Benefits of Digital POC
Digital POC combines the trusted environments of healthcare settings with the power of digital targeting and flexibility. From waiting room TVs to telehealth integrations, digital touchpoints extend engagement into every stage of the patient journey—before, during, and after a healthcare visit. Key benefits include:
- Targetability and flexibility: Campaigns can be customized by demographics, clinical attributes, geography, or even device. Some digital platforms make it possible to reach patients by care stage or diagnosis code. Digital formats also allow mid-campaign adjustments, ensuring investments stay efficient.
- Creative consistency: Common creative specifications for digital wallboards and screens make it simple for marketers to develop one asset for a tactic that can run across multiple partners.
- Measurable impact: Digital POC can provide digital reports and, in some cases, engagement level data.
Digital POC Tactics
Digital POC isn’t limited to office walls—it spans the entire healthcare ecosystem, connecting in-person and virtual care pathways.
Patients and caregivers engage with digital touchpoints at multiple points in their healthcare journey. Understanding these environments is the first step to building effective campaigns.
Touchpoints Before the Visit
- Digital Front Doors: Many health systems are now offering mobile “first touch” pathways—appointment booking apps, reminders, and pre-visit screening tools that can integrate educational messaging.
- Mobile Devices & Check-in Tablets: Reach patients early, delivering education as they register or explore symptoms.
Touchpoints At the Facility
- Waiting Room TVs and Digital Signage: Deliver dynamic messaging while patients are receptive and engaged. With average wait times exceeding 13 minutes, patients biding time before their visit are a captive audience that values health information.
- Interactive Wallboards in Exam Rooms: Provide visually engaging education that supports provider–patient dialogue and drives action in the last few moments before treatment discussions occur.
Virtual Touchpoints
- Telehealth Visits: Sponsored messaging can appear before, during, or after an appointment—extending POC into the home.
- Electronic Health Records (EHRs) & Patient Portals: HIPAA-compliant messaging targeted by diagnosis, treatment codes, or care stage. These placements ensure relevance and precision while aligning with clinical workflows.
Post-Visit Touchpoints
- Follow-up Content in Portals or Pharmacy Environments: Sustain education, prompt refill behaviors, and encourage adherence after patients leave the clinic.
Best Practices for Digital POC Campaigns
While the opportunities to succeed with digital POC are vast, success, as always, depends on thoughtful execution. Here are some key best practices for digital POC:
- Leverage data and testing for optimization: Digital formats allow for mid-campaign adjustments—refreshing creative, adjusting targeting, or layering in new placements. Build flexibility into contracts so optimization isn’t an afterthought.
- Maintain freshness of messaging: Rotate messages frequently on digital screens to maintain freshness without overwhelming patients.
Best Practices for All POC Campaigns
Point of care media best practices often apply across multiple formats. Read this blog post for additional information about POC best practices.
Collaborate Early with Partners: As the POC Academy’s Planning, Contracting & Auditing Course states, start with clear RFPs that outline campaign objectives, target audiences, KPIs, creative requirements, and auditing expectations. Early alignment ensures smoother execution and fewer roadblocks mid-campaign.
Prioritize Compliance and Trust: Working with POCMA-certified product lines ensures credibility, auditing and transparency. POCMA’s Certification Seal assures that media partners adhere to rigorous third-party audits. Certification covers both network audits (verifying presence and functionality) and campaign audits (ensuring delivery meets contracted metrics). Incorporating certified product lines not only protects your investment but also strengthens trust with internal stakeholders.
Customize your creative to embrace clarity and reinforce patient behaviors: Tailor creative with patient-first messaging, clear calls to action, and alignment with campaign objectives. And consider how messaging can prepare patients to ask questions, start therapy, or stay adherent. Be sure to:
Use bold fonts and concise text
Add captions to videos for accessibility
Keep visuals patient-first and education-driven
Confirm creative specs with partners upfront to avoid resizing or compliance delays
The FDA regulates manufacturer-sponsored promotions of prescription drugs, including TV and radio commercials, sales aids, journal ads, patient brochures, websites, social media, webinars, speeches, emails, and text messages. To ensure your POC ads are compliant with the latest FDA regulations, download our guide.
Customize Calls to Action (CTAs): Adapt CTAs to each stage of the patient journey. For example:
Exploration: “Learn the symptoms of chronic migraine.”
Engagement: “Ask your doctor if this treatment is right for you.”
Treatment: “Enroll in our savings program.”
- Maintain consistency in targeting: Keep target lists stable for at least six months to preserve the integrity of measurement studies.
Creative Best Practices in ActionStrong creative is often the difference between engagement and wasted impressions. POC campaigns should:
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Measuring Your POC Campaigns
One of the biggest advantages of POC is its ability to empower marketers to measure outcomes. When building a successful measurement approach for your POC media, consider the following:
- KPIs to track include new-to-brand prescriptions (NBRx), diagnosis lift, cost per start, adherence/refill rates, and patient–provider conversations.
- Test vs. control studies with claims data partners can isolate the impact of exposure on new prescriptions and diagnoses.
- Timing matters: prescribing behaviors often take six months or more to shift. Build longer windows into your measurement plans.
It’s important to note that effective POC marketing often combines physical, digital, and interpersonal touchpoints. Work with media partners to design multi-touch attribution frameworks that reflect reality.
POC’s Strategic Imperative
Brands seeing success at the POC aren’t just marketing – they’re educating – connecting patients with the therapies that can improve their outcomes.
POC’s $1B revenue milestone isn’t just about channel growth—it’s about validation. Marketers are recognizing that the most powerful campaigns are built from the Point of Care outward.
Instead of layering POC in as a last tactic, leading brands are making it the foundation of their media strategy.
In a fragmented digital media landscape, POC delivers stability, trust, and measurable impact. It’s a rare channel that marketers, patients and healthcare providers agree adds value to the care experience.
Make POC Part of Your 2026 Strategy
The future of healthcare marketing spans physical offices, virtual platforms, and mobile-first experiences. POC media sits at the center of this future, combining reach, trust, and measurable ROI.
By leveraging the right products, aligning with best practices, and keeping patient and healthcare provider engagement at the heart of every campaign, brands can ensure their messaging resonates in the moments that matter most.
Want to learn more about utilizing these tactics for your 2026 strategy? Complete the POC Academy Course on engaging patients with print and static POC here. And the course on engaging patients with digital POC here.
