MedHub: a secure home for Novartis's HCP community

Novartis needed a single secure platform where healthcare professionals could reach product information, patient resources and event content across multiple therapy areas — without ever blurring the line between promotional and educational content, a distinction regulated closely in Australia.

General information had to stay publicly accessible while clinical detail sat behind a login, verified HCPs needed to move between specialties without friction, and the whole platform had to be built entirely within Adobe Experience Manager’s technical and content constraints, with no bolting on outside tools. It also had to unify what would grow to nine separate therapy areas, each carrying its own Novartis product branding, into one coherent experience for an audience that would abandon anything that wasted their time.

Four things had to hold at once for this to work:

• Regulatory compliance on pharmaceutical content, without adding friction for HCPs who were already verified professionals
• Access-gating that sat around the platform, rather than splintering it into disconnected specialty silos
• Working within Adobe Experience Manager’s real capabilities, not against them, since it was the sole content platform with no flexibility to bolt on external tools
• One coherent platform across nine specialties, each with distinct content needs, audiences and regulatory nuances

I developed the sitemaps and content structure for each therapy area, presenting progress to the client every two weeks.

Interviews with HCPs across dermatology, gastroenterology, rheumatology and haematology surfaced needs specific to each specialty, not a generic “doctor persona”:

• Time-poor clinicians needed to find specialty-specific content fast, without wading through material for other specialties
• Trust and credibility signals — source, evidence, currency of information — mattered more to this audience than to a general consumer one
• Interactive, shareable resources were valued far more than static text: HCPs wanted material they could use directly in patient conversations or pass on to colleagues
• Access friction had to stay minimal for already-verified professionals, even though the compliance requirements behind it were strict

The data backed it up: 80% of HCPs consumed product information during work hours on a laptop, while 30% accessed it with a patient present, intending to share it on the spot.

Many teams treat compliance as a constraint that limits design. Here it was treated as a design requirement that informs architecture — clear compliance structure making intent explicit rather than getting in the way.

Authentication and access-gating were designed to sit around the platform rather than splinter it into disconnected specialty silos, so verified HCPs could move between therapy areas within one coherent experience. On top of that sat a colour-coded content-type system — blue for product information, purple for educational, green for promotional — with the separation built at the architectural level, not just visually, plus an audit trail built into the foundation from day one.

Content formats were chosen to match what HCPs actually valued: interactive eLearning modules, calculators and forms they could use directly in patient conversations or share with colleagues, not static pages repurposed from other channels.

The platform’s brand structure reinforced the same idea: MedHub and Novartis branding for open content, specific product brands, and specialty sub-brands like “Vital Signs” for secured, specialty-specific sections. That meant new therapy areas could be added without redesigning the core experience each time.

HCPs said as much directly: “It’s very user-friendly, especially when I need to quickly access information on my phone,” and “Being able to share key treatment information directly with my patients through the iPad has been really helpful.” One specialist put it plainly during COVID: “MedHub allowed us to stay engaged with important events, even during the toughest months.”

MedHub launched as one of Australia’s largest privately funded HCP platforms, and kept growing well beyond its initial scope:

• 300+ HCPs registered in the first month after launch
• 1,400+ GPs and specialists enrolled within two years
• 23 online HCP events hosted during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping engagement going when in-person events weren’t possible
• Grew from 4 to 9 therapy areas post-launch, without a core redesign