Demand forecast and ideal profile development

Background and objectives

Our client's influenza vaccine franchise wished to find out what would be the future demand landscape in the United States for influenza vaccines, taking into account new differentiated products entering the market place over the next 10 years, and assuming no supply or distribution issues. Other objectives included:

• Assessment of the impact of entry of various differentiated products into a market without supply constraints
• To quantify the likely market performance of various differentiated products
• To project hypothetical market shares, based on trade-off with current product options, of various differentiated products

Approach

Research was conducted online using a conjoint exercise to assess the ideal product profile and also to understand potential demand for various differentiated products.

• 2,000 consumers and 500 doctors were interviewed
• In order to understand diffusion of various products into the market we employed Bass diffusion techniques plus Juster scale uptake modelling
• We utilised adaptive choice-based conjoint to model various vaccine attributes and their relative impact on product preferences among consumers and physicians, in order to identify those attributes of the client's future products which would most enhance or depress future consumer demand.

Results delivered

In order to forecast how demand for influenza vaccines, including both current and future products of our client, would grow or diminish in coming years, we constructed a market share modeller in Excel, one of many tools which allowed us to evaluate market scenarios with different orders of entry for numerous products.

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

Prescription and drug switching dynamics in oncology

Background and objectives

Lifescience Dynamics was commissioned to carry out a patient diary study in multiple myeloma. Our client had a chemotherapy product and its sales were not matching their expectations. They wanted to understand the market at a granular level to diagnose the low sales issue. The objectives included measuring the frequency of behaviours and results within the key steps (brand choice and re-initiation) in the treatment decision process:
In addition they wanted to know:

• Why patients "leak" or drop-out?
• What are the clinical patient characteristics that influence treatment choice?
• Where are the high value opportunities in terms of potential our product?

Approach

We designed a qualitative phase with focus groups and IDIs to understand and catalogue all parameters for decision making in different stages of cancer in both treatment native and pre-treated patient groups.

This helped us to design pre-coded field materials for an on-line survey in the USA and EU5 markets in the form of a 30 minute patient medical note collection.

Results delivered

Our report covered all the objectives of such patient referral patterns for un-diagnosed and diagnosed patients. It included data analysis (according to analysis plan) such as switching and churn rates, conclusions and recommendations.

• Market dynamics simulation model from conjoint
  • The resulting perceptual model is held in an Excel-based modelling structure developed by Lifescience Dynamics which, given its user-friendly Windows interface, was supplied to the client for their own internal use in future model simulations with minimal training.
  • The Excel-based interface is vastly more user-friendly than the CBC simulation programme, yet more powerful because perceptions are incorporated into the model. There is, in fact, a facility for relative adjustment of current perceptions, as well as for the blanket imposition of new product alternatives.
• Patient record form database
• Most of the interpretation of the model structure relied on visual representation of the relationships discovered. To this end a 'results investigation tool' was developed by the LSD team and provided to the client.
• The tool was written in 'Visual Basic' and ran within Excel.
  • There was a front-end tool, which enabled the client's personnel to visualise graphical results from the mined data sets.
  • The tool consisted of user-friendly software, which is menu/buttons driven and easy to use with 'click and drop'.
  • The tool automated the graphing and reporting routines. It was possible to make graphical representation of various possible combinations of fields/attributes within the mined data set.