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New benchmark reveals significant digital maturity gap across UK POM companies’ product-information estates

A new benchmark maps 100 UK prescription medicine companies across five maturity bands and finds a market at very different stages of digital development

UK POM Digital Estate Benchmark

A new benchmark from healthcare digital agency Genetic Digital has revealed a significant gap in how UK prescription-only medicine (POM) companies manage their digital product-information estates — the publicly visible digital presence that patients, healthcare professionals and carers encounter when searching for information about a medicine.

The UK POM Product-Information Estate Benchmark 2026 assessed 100 UK marketing authorisation holders across eight dimensions including product visibility, audience routing, prescribing information access, and UX and findability. The results show a market at very different stages of digital maturity, with the average mid-specialty company scoring 6.3 out of 10 against a Big Pharma comparator average of 9.4 out of 10.

Key findings from the benchmark:

  • The average maturity score across mid-specialty and small-specialist UK POM companies is 6.3 out of 10
  • 60% of companies are classified as having a limited or fragmented estate — meaning the provision of prescribing information, audience routing and supporting digital content is inconsistent across their portfolio
  • The gap between the average mid-specialty company (6.3) and the Big Pharma comparator group (9.4) is 3.1 points — representing a substantial difference in how findable, navigable and useful product information is in practice

The benchmark assessed publicly visible evidence only and is not a regulatory or ABPI compliance audit. It measures the maturity and usability of the digital estate a company presents to the outside world — not whether internal compliance processes are in place.

Why this matters now

Search behaviour is changing. Patients increasingly search for medicine information directly before or after a consultation. HCPs use search to access prescribing information, check adverse event reporting routes and find patient support resources — often outside of dedicated portals. As AI-powered search tools begin to surface and summarise product information, the quality and structure of a company’s digital estate will increasingly determine whether their products are visible, useful and accessible at the moments that matter.

Companies that have not built a company-designed digital presence around their products risk being hard to find and harder to navigate at the moment a patient or clinician is actively looking for information they are entitled to access.

Private benchmark reviews now available

Genetic Digital is offering private, fixed-scope product-information estate reviews for UK POM companies based on the benchmark framework. Each review provides a scored, benchmarked assessment of a company’s digital estate — including a therapy area peer comparison, traffic light summary, and prioritised recommendations.

Companies do not need to have appeared in the benchmark sample to request a review.

To read the report visit: https://www.geneticdigital.co.uk/pom-benchmark/

This content was provided by Genetic Digital

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