Innovation Institute
Fostering a company culture of innovation
The world of healthcare is constantly evolving. We apply innovative thinking to every aspect of our business, from research design to delivery of insights and recommendations. We investigate, test and evaluate new technologies, tools and techniques, frameworks and approaches to find the best research solution to answer your business question.
Our Innovation Institute, championed by an internal steering committee, aims to foster a company culture of innovation. The programme encourages employees from across our offices to work together in a creative environment to develop innovative techniques and methodologies that expand the range of products and services we can offer to our clients.
The Innovation Institute comprises our annual iFactor competition and multiple hackathon events that take place throughout the year. These initiatives challenge employees to examine all aspects of the business, including research methodologies, how we conduct research, delivery of outputs and internal processes; in order to optimise current processes and ways of operating to work more efficiently and effectively. The institute also incorporates Research Partnership’s qualitative and quantitative Centres of Excellence, which strive to provide the most intelligent and output-focused research solutions and foster best practice approaches.
As a result of the programme, we now offer our clients a wide range of innovative research solutions including Rx Rationale, In Reality, ChoiceQual, PSP Enhance and emotional analysis. We are currently exploring the use of voice analysis as well virtual and augmented reality technologies. We’re incredibly proud of what our Innovation Institute has achieved so far and in 2019, Research Partnership was awarded runner-up in the ‘Business Impact through Innovation’ category at the EphMRA MR Excellence Awards.
Innovation in #MRX webinar series
Our Innovation in #MRX webinar series covers a range of market research innovations with value in global healthcare. So far, topics have included emotional analysis, time series forecasting, social media listening and novel conjoint approaches. You can access recordings of these webinars below:
To find out more about the Innovation Institute or to discuss an upcoming project that might benefit from a more innovative approach, please contact us using the below form.
Richard Head
Director
Richard has 13 years' experience in healthcare market research consulting. He won the EphMRA Presidents Award 2017 for contribution to pharmaceutical market research. Richard also co-authored the Free Thinking white paper, 'Patient centricity: Reality or rhetoric?'.

- Innovation case studiesHow facial analysis was used to evaluate the emotional impact of a disease promotion campaign
The challengeOur client had developed a visual and emotion-invoking, online disease awareness campaign aimed at challenging physicians’ current perceptions of treatment. Research was required to understand physicians’ reactions to the campaign (rational and emotional) and whether it would have the desired effect of increasing use of their treatment in the future, to help encourage the client’s local operating companies to adopt and roll out the…
read more »How we uncovered unmet needs using social media listeningThe challenge: Our client wanted to further their understanding of the impacts a long-term rare skin condition can have on patients by exploring the patient journey. Market research was required to identify opportunities for improving the patient experience and inform the brand strategy for their product. The solution: We began by conducting exploratory research using social media listening to review the online commentary and get…
read more »How an online market research community delivered fresh insights into a small and hard-to-reach audienceOften a short research study isn’t sufficient to get the level of insights and understanding that you require, especially when working with a hard to reach target audience.
read more » - Innovation blogsEmotional Recognition using Facial Analysis
Do you have a poker face or does your expression give you away? According to psychologists, a lot of emotional information can be drawn from our facial expressions, which is valuable to us as market researchers as we are interested in the emotional responses driving people’s attitudes and behaviours. We recently partnered with a tech company called Affectiva which has analysed over 5 million faces…
read more »Like, Like, Like: How pharmaceutical companies can harness the power of social media insightsGiven the colossal amount of personal and professional information that we share online, social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter are fast becoming treasure troves of big data. As the popularity and diversity of platforms increases, so too does their utility for healthcare market research. Combined with the continuous stream of user-generated content, advances in research technology now allow marketers to tap into social…
read more »Can virtual reality revolutionise the way we conduct healthcare market research?In the final installment of a three-part series exploring immersive technologies, Harrison Gaiger looks at how technological advances in VR/AR are offering new opportunities for conducting healthcare market research.
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