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Claire Fradet Aubignat, March 2017
A number of factors have come together in recent years to drive a transformation within pharmaceutical companies from being product-led to patient-centric:
This transformation is a welcome one, which benefits all parties, but also puts considerable challenges on big pharma. A patient-centric model demands huge investment and a company-wide commitment to putting patients’ wants and needs first during all stages of healthcare delivery, from drug discovery through to long-term disease management.
Market research is ideally placed to support pharma with this need for greater patient understanding throughout the stages of product commercialisation. However, it’s not simply a case of doing more market research with patients. It’s about including the voice of the patient when considering any aspect of drug delivery or healthcare service provision, in early-phase clinical development, as well as when a drug is about to launch.
Market research needs to provide 360-degree insights from all key stakeholders with whom the patient comes into contact. Research programmes should employ methodologies and techniques which help deliver truer patient insights and more closely reflect their behaviour in the real world. And the insights delivered from research, even if not among patients, must tell the story from the patient perspective.