Case study: How insights about living with asthma were used to segment patients and raise awareness across Asia

The solution
We carried out two phases of quantitative online interviews with respondents from eight markets across China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan. The first phase was conducted with asthma patients and the second with asthma-treating physicians. In order to ensure relevance and with a view to ultimately publishing the research, both phases were supported by a steering committee comprising at least one Key Opinion Leader per market.  

The outputs
Through this research we were able to identify HCPs’ and patients’ conflicting attitudes towards asthma and condition management. Because we were able to recruit a large number of both patients and physicians from eight markets, we could identify country specific perspectives as well as commonalities and gaps in patient needs. We were also able to drill down into differences in attitudes between general practitioners and respiratory specialists.

The patients’ responses were used to develop a segmentation, from which a predictive patient “typing tool” was yielded and tested in the HCP / KOL phase. The “typing tool” was developed with the aim of using it in real life clinical settings to help physicians tailor their treatment approach to the appropriate patient attitudinal segment.

The KOL steering committee were able to advise on how the research objectives could be aligned with academic hypotheses so that the findings could be validated and made meaningful for use in scientific publications. This led to the research findings being presented at medical conferences and published in a number of industry journals.