Doing More with Less: A New Mandate for Pharma Research

Authored by:  Sarah Brown & Mariel Metcalfe

At this year’s EPHMRA one-day meeting, a consistent theme echoed across the sessions: do more with less. We’ve applied this mindset across multiple therapy areas – for example, in this case study exploring the IBD patient journey, where we combined qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop foundational segmentation and support better strategic planning. As healthcare market researchers navigate tightening budgets, faster timelines, and a surge of available data from both traditional and non-traditional sources, the focus is shifting from simply collecting more data, to maximizing the value of what’s already available.

One concept that stood out – and resonated strongly with our own experience – was the call to make every market research project work harder. This means moving away from viewing research outputs as one-time deliverables, and instead considering how data can be repurposed, integrated, and enriched to generate new strategic value.

Our own contribution to the discussion came in the form of a practical case study that showcased just how impactful this mindset shift can be.

Fusing Data for Strategic Value: A Real-World Case Study

Our client faced a dilemma working on an asset in cardiovascular disease. They needed to go beyond available surface-level data and truly understand patient attitudes – what motivates them, what barriers they face, and how those attitudes influence treatment decisions, but doing this outside of the US presented serious challenges – including compliance restrictions, budget limitations, and the difficulty of recruiting patients at scale.

The client wanted to create segments that could inform global go-to-market planning, guide tailored messaging, and even provide a practical typing tool so physicians could identify patients at the point of care. Importantly, the study was designed to run across multiple regions, so insights had to be both robust and adaptable to different healthcare settings.

The Fusion Approach

Instead of launching a new standalone study, the client leveraged two syndicated data sources they already subscribed to:

• Therapy Watch – Our syndicated HCP tracking data
• Living With – Our syndicated patient-reported outcomes database

Syndicated data is real-world, current, and readily available, but by combining the physician and patient lenses, we also reduced inherent biases in each viewpoint and uncovered a more balanced picture. That meant hypotheses could be tested with greater accuracy and robustness, and the outcome amplified.

From the outset, we designed bridging questions to align patient-reported behaviors with the corresponding clinical features captured by HCPs. These allowed us to fuse the datasets across key clinical and demographic factors like age, gender, comorbidities, cardiovascular events, diagnosis details, disease control, treatment history, and compliance.

Onto this foundation, we layered the attitudinal insights from the Living With study – patients’ attitudes to health, their views on treatment, and their relationships with HCPs. Therapy Watch data brought in robust clinical parameters, such as a detailed treatment history and cardiovascular risk events.

The outcome was a dataset that unlocked broader data types and deeper understanding – revealing both how patients present clinically and how they experience treatment.

Benefits of Blending Physician & Patient Data

On their own, physician and patient perspectives can each carry ingrained biases, but when combined, those biases are reduced – allowing us to see the full picture. With both lenses, our hypotheses became more accurate and more robust, and blind spots were removed. This can have a real impact – with the insights used to help HCPs better understand not only adherence and treatment progression, but also how to optimize care by taking attitudinal and lifestyle factors into account – things like patient support programs or non-clinical needs.

Ultimately, the fusion delivered more than the sum of its parts, offering a holistic, well-rounded view of both the clinical and attitudinal sides of the story. And crucially, this approach also avoided the need for a costly and time-consuming new study. By rethinking how existing data could be combined and reinterpreted, we were able to generate new value, faster and more cost effectively.

The Future of Pharma Insights: Why Data Fusion Matters Now

In today’s landscape, pharma companies don’t suffer from a lack of data – they struggle with how to connect it. Data fusion changes that, inviting us to think like insight curators rather than just insight generators. And the rise of AI and advanced analytics makes this approach even more scalable and potentially impactful. With the right human judgment guiding the process, data integration can surface patterns and stories addressing a range of commercial challenges that would otherwise be missed in isolated analysis.

Ready to unlock richer insights? Contact us to explore how Therapy Watch and Living With can power your next project.