Case study: How we helped to gauge pricing and reimbursement expectations for a novel treatment in resource-limited settings

The challenge
Our client wanted to understand the value drivers and reimbursement landscape for an infectious disease in order to guide the pricing of their novel treatment in the public and private channels.

The solution
We began with an initial deep dive session with the client global and country teams to explore their understanding of the current landscape. Local intelligence was also sought from Research Partnership’s valued in-country partners.

Following this, interactive in-depth interviews were conducted with payers. We also included prescribing physicians and members of local patient advocacy groups as a proxy to understand patients’ potential willingness to pay in the out-of-pocket channel.

Discussions were structured to identify key value drivers, gauge perceived value of the client’s product profile and inform willingness to pay based on spontaneous and prompted price expectations. Payers were provided with pre-read background materials in advance of the discussion to aid their understanding of the market and key issues and provide a uniform context amongst respondents, so maximising the value of their interview time. All respondents were asked to complete a short pre-task prior to the interviews to stimulate their thinking regarding treatment cost and support discussion flow.

Markets: South Africa, Botswana

The outputs

Final strategic recommendations were developed by considering all elements of the research. We provided our client with a report comparing countries and channels, helping them to understand:

Value drivers for their novel product

• Value attributes and drivers stakeholders are looking for in a new treatment
• How their product’s profile and value proposition match up to those value drivers
• Payers’ value-based reimbursement expectations

Willingness to pay

• What price premium payers would be willing to pay for our client’s product
• How private and public channels would approach such a price premium, including appetite for any innovative contracting approaches
• What level of out-of-pocket cost patients would be willing to pay