Patient and doctor segmentation/motivational cluster analysis

Background and objectives

Lifescience Dynamics was commissioned to carry out a patient and doctor segmentation study in our client's core therapeutic area in order to inform decision-making regarding detailing and communications.

Approach

Research was conducted online with patients and doctors and a choice task/conjoint exercise was used to assess the weight of various drivers on the uptake of our client's product:

• Patients were segmented by their unmet needs, as well as the perceived importance of various product attributes (assessed using the conjoint exercise)
• Physicians were segmented by their uptake tendencies (early adopters, laggards, etc.)
• Physicians were also segmented by their product and attribute preferences

Results delivered

Our client was equipped with the information they needed to provide their sales force with the information and targeting information necessary to optimise product uptake.

Patient segments identified included:

• Balanced efficacy cluster
• Single-minded efficacy cluster
• Anti-preservative cluster
• Side-effect/doctor administration cluster

Physician segments identified included:

• Contra-indication cluster
• Professional administration cluster
• Anti-mercury cluster

Commercial intelligence - Assessing generic threat and post patent loss planning

Background and objectives

Our client engaged us to provide generic defence and patent loss optimisation strategy support. As part of this engagement one module included competitive intelligence to understand:

• Which companies intended to launch in key markets
• Timing of generic launches
• Intelligence on super generics and reformulations under development by competitors
• Assessment of any issue proving bioequivalence of generics to regulators

Approach

Competitive intelligence was collected from more than 20 companies in markets which included Russia, Ukraine, China among many others.

• This involved first populating the list of potential competitors, which we accomplished by querying various primary sources as well as speciality databases which generic companies use for research
• The first wave of research was to determine who had the intent and the capabilities to launch in our client's major markets
• The second wave of research targeted only likely competitors and focused on their commercialisation strategy, likely markets they would try to enter, how aggressively they would promote (if at all) their product and whether they planned to develop a 'super generic'

Results delivered

• Thorough and comprehensive assessment of likely intensity of generic competition, including first to market and total number of likely players
• Our resulting insight provided evidence which contradicted one of the client's primary assumptions, resulting in a major shift in their strategic plan.

Product lifecycle management - Optimising the current and future ophthalmology franchise with a portfolio strategy in the face of impending generics

Background and objectives

The client, a top 10 pharmaceutical company, engaged us to undertake a strategy evaluation and formulation project taking into account pending generic threats facing ophthalmology franchises.

The key challenges facing our client were as follows:

• The optimal strategies for maximising short-term sales of the existing products may not be consistent with the long-term objectives of the portfolio.
• As market leading products in the X market, Z and Y will be important reference products for new products in development. This suggested that it is important to maintain the price of the brands as far as possible.
• However, it was also important to maintain a strong presence in the ophthalmology market as a platform for the new products. This necessitated targeted price reductions to maintain market share.
• In most markets, loss of patent is expected to occur at a similar time to the launch of the first new product. In some cases the exact timing of launch (following reimbursement negotiations where needed) relative to generic entry may be critical.
• The issue was more pressing in two European markets where generic entry could be significantly earlier than the launch of the new product.
• Price reductions in these two European markets in response to generic entry, may be optimal for those markets, but may have a knock-on effect through referencing pricing or parallel trade in other EU countries with longer patent life.
• In the US the client faced a particular challenge with the loss of patent of a competitor product in a different class but of a direct competitor. The possible implications for our client's product X and Y's volume, and to assess measures taken by ABC needed to be understood and strategies required to deal with these.

Approach

This was a large project lasting eight months with multiple phases, advance analytics, analogue modelling, competitive intelligence on generic companies, quantitative market research to measure brand equity, payer research to develop a pricing strategy for the follow-on product, and finally modelling of various strategies and tactics at country level as well as global ROI analysis.

• Intelligence about likely generics (Stages 1A, 1B 1C and 1D)
• Impact of generics on brand price and share based on country systems analysis and analogues (Stages 1C, 1D)
• Assessment of the pricing opportunity for new products (2C)
• Payer research: this tested the likely response from physicians in an environment where generic X and Y were available (2A).
• Primary intelligence: this tested the likely response from generic manufacturers; their interest and capabilities to manufacture and distribute copies or APIs of our client's product.
• Primary quantitative research: to provide the team with robust quantitative numbers for forecast modelling of revenue, and produce a market share simulations model for current products, and to measure brand equity of X and Y brands with ophthalmologists.

Results delivered

There were outputs from each activity, such as CI, which highlighted "intense" generic competition and MR "low" brand equity.

We delivered at each milestone, finally delivering global and regional strategic options of viable strategies, looking at all options, such as:

• Manufacturing
• Generics launches
• Reformulations
• Bridging
• Value enhancement

We also undertook a roadshow workshop for each of six markets and provided a template and guidance to co-ordinate strategies and tactics. All options were backed up by financial models.