The word Key Opinion Leader is used widely in the healthcare industry, however, there are new emerging thought leaders called Digital Opinion Leaders (DOLs) that are becoming increasingly known in the healthcare world. DOLs have mastered how to share and access information in the digital world through the use of social media, so how exactly do you engage with a digital opinion leader?
Digital Opinion Leaders are a category of healthcare influencer that did not exist in any structured form a decade ago. They are clinicians, researchers, and other healthcare professionals whose primary platform is digital, and whose audience is reached through social media, podcasts and video rather than journal articles or conference panels. Engaging with them is similar to engaging with traditional KOLs in some ways and very different in others. Treating them as KOLs in a different format will produce poor results.
What is a Digital Opinion Leader, and how is it different from a KOL?
A KOL is recognised within their professional community for academic credentials, clinical experience, and conference and publication track record. A DOL is recognised across both their professional community and a wider digital audience, often including patients and consumers, for the volume and quality of their digital communication.
The audiences are different. KOLs reach other clinicians, regulators and clinical influencers. DOLs reach those audiences plus patients, consumers, and adjacent healthcare professionals who follow them across platforms. The communication formats are different. KOLs operate in long-form publication and structured panel content. DOLs operate in short-form, visual and audio content. The engagement contracts are different, the content production cycles are different, and the metrics for success are different.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rise of DOLs across UK healthcare. Practitioners who had not previously built digital audiences started to, partly out of necessity and partly because the audience was suddenly there. Some of those audiences have stuck. The DOL category is now permanent in UK healthcare communication.
Five practical steps for engaging with DOLs
First: know their preferred platform. Before any outreach, audit which platforms the DOL is active on, how often they post on each, and which of their channels has the highest engagement. A DOL who posts daily on Instagram and weekly on Twitter will respond differently to engagement than one who is primarily on a podcast.
Second: become a follower. Following a DOL across their channels is research, not endorsement. It produces direct visibility into how they engage with their audience, what content formats work for them, and which of their existing partnerships are publicly active.
Third: do competitor analysis. Once following, identify which other brands and clinics that DOL is publicly working with. That tells you the competitive landscape for their attention and the format of the partnerships they accept. It also surfaces whether they have an exclusivity arrangement that would block direct engagement.
Fourth: speak their digital language. DOLs communicate in formats that are native to their platforms. Engagement that arrives in long-form deck or PDF form will not land. Engagement that arrives as a short-form video clip, a carousel, or a podcast guest pitch will. The content produced for DOL engagement needs to be designed for the platform, not adapted to it.
Fifth: collaborate with online events. Webinars, livestreams and platform-native Q&A sessions are the natural formats for DOL collaboration, and they create both the content and the engagement opportunity in a single session. Brand presence at these events should be visible but not dominant.
Which platforms dominate UK DOL activity?
Twitter remains the dominant platform for UK healthcare DOLs, particularly for clinicians who comment on policy, current research, and contemporary clinical events. Instagram is the leading platform for visual specialties, including aesthetics and dermatology. WhatsApp does not appear in DOL public-facing engagement plans because it is private, but it shapes peer reputation and informal endorsement underneath the visible layer.
Podcasts are the format that has grown fastest in the past three years for UK healthcare DOL engagement. The format suits long-form clinical conversation and reaches audiences that text-led platforms do not, including consumers who listen during commutes and downtime. Brand integration into podcast content tends to land as more credible than display advertising or sponsored social posts, because the format itself is conversation-led.
DOLs are reshaping what UK healthcare communication looks like at scale. The brands that engage them deliberately and respect the platform-native nature of their work will earn share that traditional KOL programmes alone cannot reach.
